


A Brilliant Solution

by Musa_Nocturna



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crapsack World, F/M, Space Combat, Spectre Garrus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-11
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-14 01:31:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/509881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Musa_Nocturna/pseuds/Musa_Nocturna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a dark time for the galaxy as the second krogan rebellion rages throughout Citadel Space. Pushed to desperation, the Council hatches a daring plan that may just change the balance of power, forever. Having heard rumours from a remote region of the Attican Traverse of a ruthless and powerful race known as humans, they send a Spectre named Garrus Vakarian to make first contact and negotiate for their assistance against the krogan. </p>
<p>However, as Garrus seeks the ship called Normandy and its Commander, he comes to realise that the humans have goals of their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Mission

"So you refuse?"

Garrus cocked his head, meeting Councilor Sparatus' dare with a calm look. 

"I didn't say that. But I am saying, I don't think I'm the person for this mission. I'm not a diplomat. You know that."

The council knew that very well, because they believed in using the right Spectre for the right job. Garrus' own combination of talents – a ruthless data analyst with a keen eye for detail, coupled with both ranged and close combat expertise – usually meant he was their go-to Spectre for investigations in hostile territory. It occasionally involved talking to people, but rarely convincing them of anything other than the wisdom of answering his questions.

Sparatus actually scoffed. "We know you're not a diplomat, Vakarian. That's why we're sending you this time."

On Garrus' confused look, Tevos, the asari councilor continued, "We did send a team of our best diplomats to initiate contact. They have recently returned, and informed us that future contact with the humans be best left to trained military personnel."

"In other words," Sparatus picked up, "the humans chewed them up and spit them out. Which proves that they are a perfect counter-force for the Krogan, but they must also be dealt with like the Krogan. Strength in combat is the only way to win their respect."

"So you want me to go into human territory and... find one to beat up?"

The salarian councilor just shook his head, perhaps not realising the joke. Sparatus at least looked like he got it, but was not amused. "Actually, we have a candidate for you, along with a nice long list of 'gifts' created by the diplomatic corps' analysts, consisting of raw resources we believe they are in need of, to present the humans in exchange for an agreement to negotiate."

"We do not need you to finalize negotiations for their assistance in the war effort," Tevos assured him. "We only need you to establish communications and get them to agree to consider our proposals."

"I see." That... actually sounded exactly as difficult, in Garrus' opinion. "Well, if you believe I am the man for the job...."

"We do. The Spectre office has complete downloads on all our available intel, as well as our best translation protocols."

"Though note," Valern chimed in, "that most of our translation protocols so far come by way of the Batarians. There may be inconsistencies. Make sure your own translator is set up to gather more data, and be prepared to revise on the go."

Garrus blinked, then shared another look with Sparatus, unspoken question clear. _Are you sure this is wise?_ Not that Garrus was a paragon of wisdom to begin with. If he was, he would've stayed in C-Sec. 

"We realise this mission has a lot of failure conditions," Sparatus allowed. "And I for one am not too inclined to see history repeat itself." There was a brief exchange of looks between the Councilors. They'd no doubt been debating this for quite some time.

"Nor am I." Garrus assured them, his brain already working on a preliminary draft of a plan. And pointing out concerns to raise, but Sparatus beat him to it.

"Also, we recognise that additional funding may be required for this assignment. Stop by the Spectre requisitions office before you leave, they'll set you up with a special expenditures account."

Bribes, in other words. Heh, at least not from his own pockets, this time. Bribing an entire civilisation might've burned a hole.

"And we're placing the Hierarchy frigate Unconquerable at your disposal for this mission. It is standing by in the docking bay, ready to leave at your earliest convenience."

They were just determined to plow right through all of his good objections. 

"Thank you, Councilors. I will begin immediately."

"Excellent. This meeting is adjourned."

The lights turned off and Garrus lift his omni-tool to find out where, exactly, the Unconquerable was docked. But movement in the corner of his eye got his attention.

"Garrus." Sparatus' voice was low. He stood alone at the podium. "The Krogan have broken through the sixth fleet's lines, we've lost control of relay 26."

Two jumps from the breach to Palaven. One jump to several of the Hierarchy's most populated colonies. Garrus nodded once. "I understand."


	2. The Complication

Garrus stood side-by-side with Captain Cassius on the bridge of the _Unconquerable_ as the ship prepared for the final relay jump into human territory. There was a small taskgroup on duty guarding the relay, consisting of a light cruiser and two frigates, none of them larger than the _Unconquerable_ herself. If the humans came through the relay with hostile intent, there was little doubt the three ships would be unable to stop them. Cynically put, their destruction would be the warning signal to the Hierarchy, and then only after they failed their routine check-in. 

But all truly combat capable ships were on the Krogan front, leaving the back door open. If the lesser powers in this region understood the vast amount of space that had previously fallen under protectorate status that was now up for grabs....

Well. Human infighting was doing more to protect Citadel space than the spread thin ships of the turian fleet was. Intel was dodgy as to the humans' exact combat strength – though that, in and of itself, said something. If ships had engaged the humans and lived, there would be _more_ intel available. However, the Batarians that did business with some of the human factions (nations? tribes? organisations? Garrus had probably skimmed past that detail) had noted, with some smug amusement, that the standard operating procedure for human expansion made even the Hanar look efficient.

One faction would activate a relay, scout the system, then claim it in their name. Then months would pass where the other factions scouted the same system while the first faction scrambled to gather the colonial resources necessary to establish a presence. Once comfortably settled by the first faction, a second faction would move in with superior firepower and wrest control of the system from its initial settlers, keeping the infrastructure intact. The first faction would then, invariably, return with bigger guns, and quite possibly temporary allies, to continue the cycle of conquest. At which point the situation descended into the space equivalent of a free-for-all brawl as other factions smelled blood in the air, well and truly stalling further expansion, at least for the time being.

Any other time, Garrus reflected, his mission as a Spectre would have been to find a way to keep that infighting going. Souring alliances, framing other factions, playing each of them against each other, never letting one become more powerful than the other. Intel was clear: humans were not ready to unite, even against a common foe.

So naturally, that was exactly what Garrus' mission entailed.

"Three minutes to relay, sirs." The pilot, like the rest of the crew, had been unusually receptive to having a Spectre on board. Most ships hated being conscripted for Spectre-ferrying, and not without good reason. Some, like Saren, were nearly as ruthless to their allies as to their enemies. Captain Cassius however had made something of a career out of bringing Spectres where they needed to go. And usually back again.

"Any comm buoy transmissions?" Cassius asked, even though they both knew the answer.

"No sir, we'll be going in blind."

"Understood. Proceed." He raised his omni-tool and entered a command, and a moment later his voice sounded throughout the ship. "Attention crew, general quarters, general quarters. Weapons cold, we're going in friendly. Captain out."

There was no particular flurry of action at his command – most of the crew, barely larger than a skeleton crew to begin with, were already at their stations. They'd sent a message ahead informing the humans they were coming. A ship designated _Normandy_ had sent a reply that they were welcome to this system and would be met at the relay. But given the fractured nature of the human factions, it was quite possible the message had ended up in more hands than friendly ones.

Ahead, the relay loomed. It dwarfed even the largest dreadnoughts of the turian hierarchy, and even the _Ascension_. In comparison, a frigate was little more than a speck of dust.

"I assume you want to stay on the bridge for the jump, Garrus?" Cassius said, sounding amused.

"I like windows," Garrus confirmed. "It's the sniper in me. Never feels the same looking at a screen."

The Captain chuckled knowingly.

"I'll be in the CIC. Helm, jump at your discretion."

"Aye sir."

In theory, a mass relay jump was an ordinary operation, no different from taking off or docking. Something that required skill and precision, yes, but an ordinary operation all the same.

In practice....

Garrus watched as the eezo core spun and glowed, magnificently bright as the _Unconquerable_ sent its energy pulse, telling the ageless machine their mass and destination, asking it to please send them on their way.

In practice, every jump was a miracle. The bridge went from so amazingly bright that Garrus envied the pilot his lightscreen, to pitch black in the space of a few heartbeats.

"Jump complete, running diagnostics."

And because Garrus was looking out those windows, he was the first to spot that they were not alone. There was a single white and yellow ship barely visible in the distance, in line with the mass relay and thus the _Unconquerable_.

"I believe that's our rendezvous," Garrus said.

"Sensors detect no ships in range." Argosa, the sensor technician's voice came over the intercom.

Garrus shared a look with the pilot, who was seeing exactly what he was seeing. "Double-check that, sensors. I'm looking at a ship, straight ahead."

"Uh, aye sir, double-checking."

Garrus headed back to the CIC, which was an oasis of calm. Captain Cassius stood on the raised platform looking at the holographic representation of the local space around them. There were two dots, one representing the relay, the other the _Unconquerable_. Garrus flared a mandible and joined the Captain, and a moment later a third dot appeared in the shapeless blob that designated a vessel of unknown configuration.

"We've got it on visual now, sir," Argosa said, mildly annoyed, "beware there's a lightlag, and heat sensors still claim there's nothing but empty space. It's making analysing it a hassle."

Cassius met Garrus with a brief smile, that of a commanding officer acknowledging the rules of the game had just changed. "Learn something new every day."

"Seems that way, doesn't it."

The Spectre office's intel files said the Salarians were on the brink of discovering stealth technology sufficiently good to shroud an entire ship. Intel had been making that claim, credibly, for the past two hundred years or so. There was always just one problem, one issue, left to fix.

It seemed the humans had paid no attention to the woes of the Salarian top scientists. Returning to the Citadel with confirmation of stealth tech in potentially hostile hands was worth the trip alone. And if these humans could be brought in on the side of the Citadel, well. Krogan ships were pure quantity, no quality. One stealth ship could take out an entire taskgroup on its own if they could not figure out where to return fire.

Problem being, the humans were no doubt aware that the _Unconquerable_ couldn't see them very well either. They were holding still because they felt like it, and Garrus had no doubt the obvious location – directly in line of sight with whichever ship came out of the relay – was intended to emphasise just that. 

He _hated_ being played.

But turian colonies were at great risk, and once the turians were down, there was no stopping the Krogan from rolling over every Citadel space world they felt like. And Spectres didn't have the luxury of handing off a task, simply because they felt uneasy. Garrus shrugged.

"Well, lets let them know we're suitably impressed. Hail them, please."

And that's when Garrus heard a human voice for the first time, smooth and hard, pitch as high as an asari.

"This is Director Miranda Lawson of the CSS _Normandy_. You are outgunned and trespassing in Cerberus space. Heave to and prepare to be boarded. If you resist, we will open fire."

Captain Cassius' eyes narrowed, and Garrus found himself drawing a cold breath. They looked at each other, realising the situation had just taken a dark turn. Weapon systems offline. No useful intel on human ship combat capabilities. Not to mention a ship that wasn't trackable. And no buoy to call for backup.

It was Garrus who broke the silence. "Do you suppose that was a standard human greeting and we just had a translator glitch?"

Cassius grinned, but sobered quickly. "Lets not chance it. How do you want to play this, Garrus?"

Captain Cassius was a veteran, he'd been a Captain when Garrus was just a teenager in basic training. Yet now he deferred to him, as a Spectre. It was likely the other ship was not bluffing when they claimed they had them outmatched, but Captain Cassius and his crew would do their best to at least put a dent in the human ship before their lives were ended. And no turian captain would ever willingly surrender their ship, it was anathema. Even now, Garrus had to fight the instinct to dismiss surrender outright. Spectres were supposed to operate on an entirely different level. Sacrificing dignity, honour, the core of what it meant to be turian, to win a war? That was something a Spectre would do.

"Lets comply with their 'request'," he said slowly, keenly feeling the pressure of the sheer wrongness of his words. "I'm not going to roll over though. When they come on board, I'll start talking, break out the gift list. I'll do my best to get at least your crew out of this, Captain, I sw--"

\--suddenly, klaxons wailed throughout the ship, and the weapons and sensors technicians broke into a flurry of movement as their screens flashed.

"Report." Captain Cassius demanded calmly.

"Torpedo signature," the weapons officer said with the composed voice that came with endless drills. "Tracking... stand by."

"They're firing on us already?" Cassius growled, low, and Garrus was inclined to agree. But then, the humans wouldn't know the Citadel war conventions that strictly described the minimum amount of 'reasonable time' to be afforded a ship to surrender. But,

"Tracking confirmed. It's not aimed at us, sir."

Cassius didn't even blink. "And they're not shooting at themselves, so what is going on?"

It was Argosa who spoke up. "Sir, I had a heat signature, just for a second when the torpedo launched. It's a second ship. Very, very faint, I could barely pick it up. It's gone now. But that's definitely where the torpedo is coming from."

"Another stealthed ship." Garrus surmised.

"The torpedo is heading for the _Normandy_ ," the weapon's officer supplied, "Impact in 10 sec--. Scratch that. Torpedo detonation well off the _Normandy's_ port bow."

"That was a warning shot." Captain Cassius wasn't asking.

"Yes, sir."

"Opposite side of the _Unconquerable_. Thoughtful of them," Garrus said.

"Picking up a comm signal. The new ship is hailing the _Normandy_. Wide signal, I think they want us to listen."

"Then lets hear it."

The second human voice Garrus ever heard was an amazing contrast to the first. Strong where the other had been smooth, commanding rather than merely hard.

"This is Commander Shepard of the SSV _Normandy_. That alien ship is under _my_ protection. Break off, Miranda, or I swear this time I will destroy you."

If the human was as impressed by the commanding tone as Garrus was, there was no trace. "This system is under Cerberus control now, Shepard. And you know that I have you heavily outgunned."

"Fifth fleet disagrees with you, Admiral Hackett sends his regards. They're fifteen minutes behind me."

There was a pause on the comm, then the smooth voice turned cold. "That is still plenty of time to destroy _you_."

The comm ended. Silence descended aboard the _Unconquerable_. Then Garrus shrugged. "I'm sure there's a history there."

"Multiple torpedo launches, mass accelerator shots," the weapons officer reported. "All between the two ships, none in our direction." Several beats passed. "They're performing successful evasives. No hits."

"If they don't destroy each other, maybe we'll find out," Cassius said. "Designate them CSS and SSV for now. What kind of human logic names two ships the same thing? Especially the same as an enemy."

Garrus frowned, walking over to peer over Argosa's shoulder at the raw sensor readouts. "The ideological kind where two tribes at war both claim the closest ties to a moral concept, unless I miss my mark."

Cassius snorted. "If you say so, you're the Spectre."

The hypothesis didn't feel entirely correct, and Garrus had to admit, that part of his mind that was always solving puzzles and looking for clues was very curious. It meant _something_ , of that he was certain.

That warning shot hadn't been a warning, it had been a challenge. It was clear those two commanding officers had no interest in avoiding each other. Humans might be different, of course. Maybe naming ships the same thing was a species quirk. Or maybe he'd misread the hostility in their voices. But he didn't think so. It was definitely personal. The _Unconquerable_ simply happened to be their latest battlefield.

No, his hypothesis was no doubt not just incorrect, but dead wrong.

So then, what did it mean?

"Should we engage?" the weapons officer asked. The two ships on his monitor maneuvered around the incoming fire with ease that spoke of veteran crews that didn't just react, but predicted the enemy's next action.

Garrus looked at Cassius. "That would fall under the purview of the ship's safety," he acknowledged slowly, "which is your field. But I'm not confident we have all the pieces to this puzzle yet." Yet even as he said it, Garrus wondered if this really was the best time to let the detached investigator part of his mind call the shots. Garrus the fighter had already picked a side: that determined human who'd claimed the _Unconquerable_ as under their protection.

But Cassius merely nodded.

"Agreed. Lets see how this plays out. Weapons, go to standby, gradual buildup if you can, try not to spook them. Helm, move us away, lets not catch any stray fire. Nice and slow. Sensors, give the Spectre something to work with, do we have any readings at all?"

"Yes, sir." Argosa sounded relieved. "I can extrapolate fairly certain positions by looking at the origin points of their weapons fire, and whatever is hiding their heat signature is not as effective while they're firing. It's giving me a better look at their emissions, and a focus point for the optical sensors."

"Tactical appraisal? Is our apparent rescuer able to protect us like they said?"

"From the weapons fire we're tracking, the _Normandy_ , er, the CSS _Normandy_ seems to have a lot more firepower just like they claimed. The SSV's torpedoes are getting picked off by the CSS's point defense lasers almost as fast as they launch. But mass accelerators are no joy, they're both really fast and agile, I think they can keep dodging around each other all day. At least until one of their pilots make a mistake. I don't know what kind of armor the SSV is packing under the hull, but I think one hit is all it would take – they're no larger than we are." She paused, peering at her raw output. "In fact... SSV looks strangely like us, sir, it has the same dimensions as our... frigates... fuck."

Garrus leaned forward, willing to see what Argosa had just seen. "What is it?"

"I think that _is_ one of ours, sir. Or at least parts of one. I've got a database match. Remember the scout ship that went missing at relay 314 a few years back?"

"Yes." He'd read the investigation, no trace of it had ever been found. He'd lost a friend on that ship. "You're saying this is that scout?"

"Heavily modified, the power signature doesn't match at all, they've gutted her and put in a new engine. But the hull? Silhouette is a match, that's ours."

Garrus crossed his arms and took a breath, staring at the shape on the screen, familiar with just enough alterations to make the ship appear as alien as it was. His mind raced with the implications; the fate of the crew, the effect this had on the humans' willingness to negotiate. On _his_ willingness to negotiate. Did it change anything? Should it? He'd been ready to trust this human only a moment ago, on less information than he had now. 

Argosa craned her neck to look at him, quizzical at his silence. He fed as much mock disappointment into his voice as he could.

"And here I was hoping for an exciting first contact like when the Dalatrass pulled the Primarch's fringe. Guess they won't be overcome with curiousity about us after all."

She grinned and turned back to her monitor. Garrus stared at the ships displayed on it, his thoughts running wild.

One of them wanted to board his ship. The other was a spiritless ghostship. He shouldn't want to side with either, yet....

It had to be the voice. That commanding declaration to protect a complete stranger. That's what it all came back to.

Hadn't he always wanted to make a difference, like that? He'd joined C-Sec to be a cop and he'd believed in the work he'd done. Investigations had simply happened to be something he was good at.

"But it means they've probably reverse engineered our technology," he continued, letting himself analyse the situation on automation.

Cassius shook his head. "Looking at these numbers," he indicated the weapon's officer's monitor where the battle was still raging, "I don't think we had anything they needed. Stripping our scout might have given them a few ideas – they'll have a good estimate of how hard _we_ can hit – but at most it shaved a few months off their research." He paused and gave Garrus a knowing look. "And whatever happened, it was several years ago."

Which was a not-so-subtle kick in the ass to consider the here and now. Garrus flared, feeling mildly sheepish. Hesitation got people killed, and it was high time he made a choice since it was his to make.

No choice, really.

"Alright, we're siding with the SSV. They prevented us from being boarded and I don't want to be any more grateful for the rescue than I have to be. Apparently humans are supposed to respect strength, so lets show them what the turian Hierarchy can do." There was a scatter of cheers in the CIC. Reason for decision stated for the record, he added with a self-deprecating shrug. "Besides, I've always had a thing for the underdog."

The air in the CIC felt light as he sensed the crew agree with him. They had the same info he did, they knew the score. Captain Cassius nodded decisively and spoke with the ease of a shiphandler veteran,

"Engaging combat on Spectre authority. Helm, ready evasives. Weapons, status change, alter designation SSV to friendly. Alter designation CSS to hostile. Target the CSS and fire at will."

"Aye sir."

Garrus turned to the weapon's officer who was busily carrying out the orders. "Aim carefully, make sure your shots don't go wide or near the SSV. The enemy of our enemy makes for uneasy alliances, lets not create any misunderstandings."

"Of course, sir," the weapons officer said with a voice Garrus thought sounded a bit insulted. And rightfully so, Garrus had been telling the man how to do his job. He nodded in apology, and the weapon's officer continued, "But sir, I doubt we'll be able to hit them. Their stealth keeps fooling our targeting systems. It's impossible to get a firing solution for the mass accelerator, and the torpedoes will be extremely vulnerable to point defences while they reacquire lock."

"Do the best you can. At least we'll distract them."

"Aye sir. Launching torpedoes."

They watched the monitor as it tracked the two simultaneously fired torpedoes, one from port, one from starboard, streak towards their target, then unceremoniously vanish. "Torpedoes destroyed by CSS point defences."

That's when the the _Unconquerable_ was plunged into darkness as the power throughout the ship went out. It took Garrus a moment to realise he wasn't dead, and that the faint glow of monitors and emergency lights meant it wasn't absolutely pitch black. Then a sudden flurry of reports came in all at once.

"We've lost helm control."

"Energy distribution control is down."

"Weapon systems aren't respo-- huh!"

Garrus had activated his suit's magboot lock even before his conscious mind recognised the floating sensation he was experiencing as a sudden lack of gravity. When his mind did catch up, he grabbed his helmet, fit it to his suit and closed the airseal in a single move that had been thoroughly drilled into every turian during basic. The motion was mirrored by every crewmember around him in perfect synchronisation.

"Report," Cassius calmly spoke over the suit comm.

"We've got a virus in the computer, it's infected all key systems." 

Garrus recognised the voice as one of the computer techs. She sounded agitated; they hated anything that upset their orderly systems.

"Flush it."

"Trying sir, it's adapting too fast for our counter-cyberwarfare VIs to handle, faster than any VI I've ever seen."

"Understood. What do we still have control of?" Cassius asked.

"Sensors and comms," Argosa said. "They're sluggish, but they don't seem to be targeted."

Garrus sighed. "Well. At least we got their attention."


	3. The Commander

It was a safe assumption the cyberwarfare attack had come from the CSS as a direct response to the _Unconquerable_ picking sides. Though Garrus was sure the humans, either side, weren't terribly impressed by the combat display of the turian Hierarchy right there and then. Not quite the triumphant gesture of a dependable comrade-in-arms he'd intended. And considering the SSV was still fighting, either they hadn't been attacked by the virus – or they'd successfully dealt with it. More intel he wished he'd had before jumping into the system. Intel he was beginning to suspect would never find its way back to the Citadel.

"We didn't know they could do that." Cassius said, sounding perfectly composed, simply acknowledging that their enemy had outmaneuvered them, and that this was going to hurt. "These humans are... something else."

"I'll add suspicion of possessing illegal AIs to my report for the council," Garrus replied. "With my luck, they'll send me right back here to deal with it."

There was a faint snort over the comm, from who, he couldn't tell. Leaning over Argosa's chair again, he glanced at the chronometer. Fifteen minutes, the human with the commanding voice had said. They just had to hold on a little while longer.

So naturally, that's when it all went to hell.

"Consecutive sequence torpedo launch from the CSS, ten heat signatures. They mean business, that must've busted their launch-- Captain! They're firing at _us_!"

Garrus' heart sank as he turned to the holographic representation of the surrounding space. The restrictions on lightspeed sensors, even at these small ranges, meant what they were seeing had happened a few moments ago. Yet what they were seeing was clear. Death hurling towards them at increasing speeds of sublight. Immobile, unprotected and weaponless, there was nothing they could do but watch.

But then...

...for a brief moment, the SSV _Normandy_ appeared to be in two places at once, as the old light continued to carry it's old location, but newer light registered its microsecond precision FTL jump, interposing itself between the _Unconquerable_ and the incoming torpedo salvo, its functional point defence weapon systems working to pick off the multiple torpedoes that had come expecting a cold, unprotected, easy kill.

They hadn't had to do that. The _Unconquerable_ was dead in space, there was nothing for them to gain by intervening. If nothing else, they should have used the CSS's distraction to try to score a hit of their own. But instead they were risking their ship to _protect_ the _Unconquerable_.

Why? Why were they so important to these humans?

"That is one bold pilot," Garrus heard the navigator mutter. Garrus himself didn't know much about FTL jumps in combat, but he could easily believe the amount of precision required for a maneuver like that was extraordinarily difficult to achieve. Every sniper knew how quickly a millimeter at the barrel became a meter at the target, and when the measurements were in the thousands, well....

But consecutive sequence launches were lethal for a reason; sometimes it was worth overheating the launchers in order to overwhelm an enemy target and finish them off decisively. With so many torpedoes in space at once, it was easy for one or two to get lucky even against the fastest point defences. Especially when the enemy had considerably more firepower to begin with.

"Torpedo detonation. Hit to the SSV." The weapon's officer sounded grim, "Damage to their midship undersection. Reading a hullbreach, they're shedding ablative armour and venting atmo."

Assuming similar layout to the _Unconquerable_ , that meant their hangar and storage bay. As long as their section seals triggered properly, that hit, on its own, was perfectly survivable.

Unfortunately, there were two lucky torpedoes.

"Torpedo detonation, starboard. The SSV's starboard drive is damaged, they're drifting on inertia. Reading internal explosions."

For a ship that had survived so long by being agile, that was the deathknell.

And the CSS wasn't finished.

"The CSS is firing mass accelerator." There was a cold pause. "Direct hit, midship upper section. Complete hull rupture." Garrus closed his eyes. "The SSV is breaking apart."

There was silence in CIC for several moments, the darkness contributing to the feel of a tomb. Garrus was expecting the impact klaxons to begin wailing any moment, and each second they didn't seemed to stretch surrealistically long.

"They're launching escape pods." Argosa's voice was nearly gentle. Maybe because she realised, as Garrus did, that they were next. He turned to give Cassius the go-ahead to give the order to abandon ship, not that he would need it – Garrus had no intention of exerting Spectre authority to demand they fight uselessly – but a high-pitched growl got his attention.

"Bare-faced barbarians!"

"Argosa?"

"They're firing on the _escape pods_!"

" _What!?_ " That was... you didn't do that. Not even the krogan did that. The ship was your target, the crew wasn't. Escape pods couldn't dominate a system or blockade a relay. "Hail them!" he demanded, even before he had the slightest clue what he was going to say.

The smooth voice that sounded in his earpiece didn't give him a chance to find out.

"This is Director Lawson. I have nothing to say to you. Prepare to be boarded."

Ah, so that's why they hadn't fired. They wanted the _Unconquerable_ alive.

Over his dead body. "We refuse. Firing on escape pods is against the Citadel war conventions. Cease fire or I will be forced to consider this a declaration of war. The Citadel will take action against this."

He hoped dearly that human intel was incomplete when it came to the current strength of the Citadel Defence Force's fleet, or his bluff would fall completely flat. The humans could be engaging in monstrous slaughter of civilian populations and the Citadel would still not spare even a taskforce, much less a fleet.

And unfortunately, the smooth voice did not sound impressed. "You are not in a position to make threats. The Citadel has no authority in Cerberus space and your armed warship is a legitimate target under _human_ war conventions as you have intruded on _our_ territory. We are only defending ourselves, and we cannot allow you to interfere with humanity. We are not puppets you can use to do your bidding."

Garrus was glad the transmission was audio only, because he flared in surprise. That had sounded suspiciously specific. His mission was classified... but there had been talk of approaching the humans to deal with the krogan issue for months. All it would have taken was one leak aboard the Citadel. The humans did do business with the batarians, whose embassy was known to play fast and loose with the secrecy requirements on occasion.

He managed to contain his sigh, aware the audio pickups would send it to the human. _I came here to make allies, dammit, not enemies._ He glanced at Argosa's monitor, where six small dots were still blinking. They had stopped firing, at least. There was still a chance, he didn't have to delay them long until that human fleet showed up. He drew a breath, forced his voice to sound reasonable.

"You're right that we have no authority in your space, and you have my apologies for our inadvertent intrusion. We are on a diplomatic mission and believed we were welcome to this system. It was an honest mistake." In front of him, Argosa was shaking her head in disgust. The Hierarchy did not grovel. Garrus agreed, but he was a Spectre first. "But please realise hostility won't do you any good. Before, we didn't know or care about your species. Now, we do. You won't be able to hide from the galactic community anymore. I'm a Council Spectre, here on their direct authority. If you shoot us down or take us prisoners, another Spectre will be sent to find out what happened to us, and they won't knock on the front door like I did."

Garrus glanced at the chrono. "Now, you heard Commander Shepard; their fleet will be here any moment. You might have time to destroy us, maybe even pick off all the escape pods, but wreckage tells its own story, and you can't be sure what exactly they'll find. So why don't we call it a draw? They live, we live, you live."

There was a pause on the other end, presumably the human checking their own chronometer, hopefully thinking it over. Then the voice was back, cold as ice.

"If Shepard is still alive, tell her she owes me. Lawson out."

The channel cut, and a moment later the lights came on in the CIC, followed by the monitors, then the gentle sensation of gravity gradually increasing to prevent anyone still floating from falling face flat. Garrus let a few moments pass, then took his helmet off, testing the air carefully. It seemed fine.

"They've gone to FTL," Argosa reported. 

"Sure? They might have gone back to stealth?" Garrus asked, not quite ready to count his blessings.

Argosa shook her head. "They were bleeding heat pretty badly towards the end, don't think they could hide it all. They're gone."

Garrus let out a breath of relief, amazed he'd pulled it off, but feeling empty as well. This was one clusterfuck disaster of a first contact if he'd ever heard of one. Sparatus was going to have his fringe.

Captain Cassius, now commanding officer of a ship no longer about to be destroyed, simply went right back to work. "Full diagnostic on all ship systems, starting with propulsion and navigation. And lets be good neighbours and pick those escape pods up. Spectre?"

Garrus nodded. Six of eight pods. Fairly good odds. Hopefully their commanding officer was one of the survivors, though he had the sneaking suspicion the other ship had deliberately targeted the escape pods she was most likely to be on, first. Why had they – _she_ – been so insistent on protecting the _Unconquerable_?

"Lets just hope their fleet doesn't arrive as we do and assume we're the ones that blew them up. Wouldn't that be a fitting end to this day."

Or maybe he was just being cynical. Captain Cassius simply nodded though, as if it was a perfectly reasonable assumption. Veteran at ferrying Spectres with all their foibles, indeed. "Lets set up a continuous transmission stating our peaceful intentions to the human fleet," he said, then went about recording said transmission.

"I'm still not detecting any...." Argosa broke off, then snorted. "Never mind."

Terrifying thought, a whole fleet able to sneak into a system under stealth, and the first thing you'd know of them was when they opened fire. The krogan blitzes were bad enough, but at least you could see them coming even when you knew there was no way to stop them.

Garrus shook his head, and then his shoulders, trying to work out some of the tension that had cropped up from the... oh, call it a 'battle', though the Hierarchy would probably label it as an 'incident' for the records. The rest of the crew were going about their after-action duties. They were all trained professionals, of course, but they were also a mostly veteran crew – happy to be alive, but there was no sense of the exhilaration rush that younger people were prone to. Still, morale was always a factor, and he was happy to find that there didn't seem to be any bruised egos... quite possibly aside from the computer techs. That had to have been an AI.

"Spectre?" A polite but unfamiliar voice sounded over the comm.

"Yes?"

"First escape pod coming onboard now, sir."

"Understood, I'll be right down." He nodded to Captain Cassius, then headed for the storage bay.

Controlled chaos reigned. The hangar hatch was open; the ship protected from the vacuum of space by a shimmering energy field. Some of the equipment and machinery stored there had been moved further into the bay to make space for six escape pods, making the lift's exit area a bit too cramped. Additionally, the ship surgeon had commandeered a respectable chunk of the remaining free space and was setting up a make-shift place for treatment. Badly injured humans could be taken up to the medbay, but for simple scrapes and burns, it was probably more appropriate to keep them all here, together.

And apparently, ship security thought so too. Six armed guards stood around the bay, weapons sheathed but looking no less ready to intervene for it. Garrus considered requesting they leave, but decided not to. The humans _should_ be aware they were coming onto the _Unconquerable_ , not the enemy ship, but one or more of the escape pods could have been damaged and their sensors non-functional. Just a safety precaution. Garrus left his own weapons in place, but went to stand in the center of the bay, where the new arrivals could see him clearly.

The first escape pod looked undamaged, and the engineering crew guided it into the bay using tethers and mass fields. The operation was made considerably easier by the escape pod's original turian design having been left mostly intact; it interfaced directly with the _Unconquerable_ 's pod retrieval system.

When the hatch opened, four humans fanned out immediately, two with raised weapons, two without, all wearing hardsuit armour, complete with helmets. The weapons immediately went on him.

"Welcome to the _Unconquerable_ ," he said, trying to sound as calm as could be expected when held at gunpoint. "I'm Garrus Vakarian, the mission commander. You have my assurances you are guests, not prisoners. We're going to pick up all escape pods, but two were destroyed by the other ship." Then he held still, leaving the initiative to stand down, or shoot, to the humans. 

And got his first good look at them outside of the much-lacking mission intel's few pictures and recordings. He wasn't sure if they were exactly what he had expected, or nothing like it. They were obviously military; the way they stood, the way they held their weapons, but Garrus wasn't certain beyond that. Too easy to make the assumption that because their body language signals looked like something he could interpret correctly, they meant the same thing. But if he was going to put a word to them, it would be 'watchful', rather than 'hostile'. That was a good sign, right?

And try as he might, he wasn't able to pick out anything that would designate rank or station. Granted, that would be the point. Garrus could be picked out from the rest of the _Unconquerable_ 's crew due to wearing his own private armour rather than the hardsuit army uniform the rest of the crew wore, but no amount of looking at him would tell anyone who or what he was.

No introduction seemed to be forthcoming from the humans. They stayed looking at each other until the second escape pod was secured. Only then, when five more humans had stepped out, some with weapons ready but not pointed at Garrus, did one of those who had stepped out of the first pod make a quick movement of the hand to the others, who immediately stood down. Well, save for one, but a second, just as quick motion, convinced that human too. Overall, Garrus was impressed with their discipline considering they were just off a dying ship, facing an unknown situation. And now he saw a potential leader to address.

"Commander Shepard?"

The human's helmeted head moved, first in likely surprise at being spoken to, then in a shake. And a moment later the humans turned to each other, obviously speaking through their suit communicators. Finally, the maybe-leader turned back to Garrus and spoke, the voice deeper than the ones he'd heard on the comm,

"No, I'm Lieutenant Commander Alenko, Shepard's second officer. She went to the bridge to get our pilot. Did...?"

The human broke off, but the request was easy enough to understand. Garrus activated his comm. "Argosa, the forward escape pod, what happened to it?" He almost dreaded the answer, and the few short moments it took her to find out felt like a small eternity as the possible scenarios created by the answer played themselves out in his mind on fast forward.

"It's intact, they're bringing it in next."

Garrus sighed in relief, and was amused to see the human do the same thing.

"Any sign of their fleet yet?"

"No, sir."

"I see. Thank you." He closed the comm, then smiled at the human. "Well, I'm sure they'll be here soon, we'll transfer you over once we're sure they won't shoot at us."

"Uh. Yes, the fleet. Thank you." There was a pause. "You should speak to Commander Shepard when she gets here."

Garrus had a hard time reading the human. That had sounded like hesitation. Didn't they want to go with the fleet for some reason? Impossible to tell by voice alone, their body language was too closed off, and the humans had kept their helmets on. A sensible precaution in a hangar with an active mass effect field keeping air in. If it failed, for just a moment, Garrus would be dead. But first contact situations sometimes required concessions to safety. Or so the Spectre first contact pamphlet had claimed.

Bloody prophetic.

Having exchanged those few simple words made the wait for the next escape pod more bearable. Garrus tried not to crowd the humans as they gathered around it, both to protect it against the turians, and to help their comrades. One of the humans had taken a first aid kit from the other pods and was hovering particularly; trained medic, Garrus judged after sharing a quick look with the _Unconquerable_ 's surgeon. 

And unfortunately, this pod wasn't intact. Garrus couldn't tell for certain, but it looked like it had been clipped by the SSV's explosion. The hatch popped open followed by a billow of smoke, not deterring the armour-clad humans in the least as they helped their shipmates out. Two of them, and compared to the other humans, these were distinctive. One wasn't in a hardsuit, for one, and seemed less... compact, less sturdy than the others. And injured.

"Doctor, Joker has a broken arm."

Garrus was rather glad that he wasn't the center of attention just then, because he surprised himself with the relief at hearing the protector's voice. And she did have an emblem, or insignia, on the hardsuit, consisting of simple thin straight lines and angles. She glanced his way briefly as she surveyed the entire bay, but then apparently dismissed him in favour of watching the surgeon and the human medic tend to the injured one. Though somehow it didn't feel like she was deliberately ignoring him, or demonstrating his unimportance to her. No, she simply had different priorities; her crew came first, the turian Spectre could take a number and get in line. 

He could respect that.

He heard the translator's hopeless warbles as it tried to parse the medical jargon and was having no luck, and was amused at the short, simple words the surgeons immediately took to using. True experts, both of them.

"We need to go to the medbay," the _Unconquerable_ 's surgeon finally said, and the human medic nodded reluctantly. The commander's head turned in Garrus' direction.

"Go on, send someone along," he replied to the unspoken question. She nodded.

"Williams. Go with them. No (warble)."

Garrus twitched a bit as the translator attempted, and failed, the last word. Presumably, the human had told the assigned guard to not make a mess in sickbay, but the translator wasn't sure.

The commander took another look at her crew, now with an additional escape pod secured, two more on the way in. Then, and only then, did she step into the center of the bay and stopped a short but respectful distance away from Garrus. As much has he hadn't had her focus before, he had it now, fully and completely. It was time for business. She took her helmet off, and Garrus met a human face-to-face for the first time. Her skin looked almost soft, and there was a fine sheen of wetness on it that glistened in the bay's lights. He thought he saw exhaustion, recognisable even in aliens. Then he met her eyes, and blinked as he realised that the faint glow coming from them was not natural, human or not. Her lips twitched as though she'd read his mind.

"I'm Commander Shepard, Systems Alliance navy."

"Garrus Vakarian, Council Spectre. On behalf of the ship and crew, thank you for intervening on our behalf." Ironic, considering how the situation had turned out. Didn't seem lost on the human, and yet... 

She was exhausted, yes; but there was also strength. Before him stood someone who had lost her ship, her command, and no doubt friends, but who also knew, beyond a doubt, that she had won. And in that victory, she had denied her enemies precisely what they had been after, even from a significant disadvantage.

Strength, pride, and fearlessness. As a Spectre, he was pleased to have confirmation that humans would be effective counters to the krogan.

As just Garrus, he was impressed.

"How about we call it even?" she replied, just as diplomatically. Oh, who were they kidding. Neither of them were diplomats, and that was working out just fine.

"Fine with me. We'll get you transferred over to your fleet as soon as they get here."

There was a pause, and she shared a brief look with the human Garrus had spoken with earlier. 

"Ah. Unfortunately, Spectre, we'll have to impose on your hospitality a while."

"How so?"

"I was bluffing. The fleet is still back at Arcturus."

Garrus blinked, incredulously. She couldn't possibly have, could she? 

The moment stretched. The human regarded him calmly, her head tilted, mirroring his. "They're not coming," she clarified, just in case.

He couldn't help it. He started laughing. The sheer audacity to claim having overwhelming force when no help would be coming, it was a very, very turian kind of a joke. He worried he was about to cause an interstellar incident right there and then, but a moment later there was a clucking from the human that his translator rendered as chuckling, and her body language grew more languid. He got his voice under control, though not enough to hide his mirth.

"Well played, Commander. You had everyone completely fooled."

Her lips twitched upwards, slightly lopsided. He mentally catalogued it as an impish grin. "It's a habit."

Garrus decided he liked this human. "Arcturus huh. As it just happens, we were headed that way. Why don't we give you a lift?" He had no idea how well the subtlety would carry across the species boundaries, but apparently it worked very well, because he got another one of those lip movements that was clearly a smile. 

"What a generous offer, thank you."

Garrus grinned and gestured back to the elevator. "I don't actually know where Arcturus is," he confessed gamely. "Would you please join me in the CIC?"

She shrugged, then turned to her crew. "Alenko, you're in charge, stay with the pods." The human she spoke to watched her with crossed arms, and something unspoken passed between them. Then Shepard simply sighed. "Vega, with me."

Of course they'd want to protect their commanding officer while on an alien ship. That was fine with him. Someone else might have been insulted at the implication that they weren't to be trusted, but Garrus had been on security detail for VIPs before. 

Besides, he wasn't entirely certain what kind of impression they'd made on the humans, for all he knew, the human second-in-command was worried about their lack of competence, rather than their lack of trustworthiness. He'd have to find that out. Yet from what he could read of the humans as they stepped into the elevator with him, there was neither fear nor weariness.

They respected strength in combat, Sparatus had said, and despite the _Unconquerable_ 's best attempt, they'd failed spectacularly at demonstrating that. But maybe they didn't need to win, they just had to prove they were willing to die trying. The krogan certainly were, they kept throwing cannon fodder at the turian lines, heedless of their losses, able to replace anything in short order. Superior tech, training, and martial discipline could make up for imbalanced size of forces to some degree, but not to the juggernaut-sized difference of the krogan.

So where did the humans fit on the galactic food chain? He spent the elevator ride looking closely at his guests. The one named Vega hadn't removed his helmet, but Shepard's eyes stood out in the darkness of the lift, clearly glowing, and clearly artificial. Were all humans augmented? Had being augmented made her the commanding officer, or had she been augmented because she was given command?

Questions. So many questions. But at least he was still alive to ask them. And with any luck....

They arrived at the CIC, and Commander Shepard strode out and towards the galaxy map as though she owned this ship too, ignoring the security guards that immediately levelled their weapons at her until Garrus waved them off.

...with any luck, she would provide him with the answers soon enough.


	4. The Humans

"Plain simple water, and levo emergency rations, best the house can do. I'm told it tastes like wood."

Captain Cassius had graciously offered his quarters for Garrus to speak to Commander Shepard in private, and they were seated in the small corner set aside specifically for informal meetings that couldn't be done in the comm room. It had turned out they had Arcturus on their starcharts as an indexed but not named system. Said starcharts had been updated to reflect the new intel, and Garrus had felt his stomach drop for the second time that day when he realised how many uncharted, inactive relays there were in this region. Or rather, formerly inactive relays. Citadel had, many centuries ago, simply stamped the systems Garrus suspected now belonged to the humans with a big "do not enter" sign and left them alone. It had been assumed the batarians would get around to settling this region, eventually. At some point. Maybe. 

"High quality wood," Shepard said once she'd managed to swallow her first bite.

Garrus grinned, and made a mental note to carry edible food for the next time he was sent to a first contact situation, and then hid his grin turning chagrined at the thought, as this was surely the very last time he had to deal with this. He was holding a datapad that had the completely useless first draft of the request for assistance, as well as the gift list, and was wondering how to bring it up. And that was made slightly more complicated by the nagging suspicion that Commander Shepard already knew what he was going to request, and why.

Diplomacy was just not his thing. At least Commander Shepard had turned out easy to get along with, so far at least. Certainly no pricklier than the average asari. And Garrus was feeling more confident about his ability to read her by the minute.

"Again, we're very grateful for the rescue, and I regret the loss of your ship and crew." Not empty platitudes, not from him. He'd lost too much to say it without meaning it. The human seemed to sense that.

"You must've known you didn't stand a chance when you launched those torpedoes."

Garrus scratched at his collar. "Ah, we had a fair idea that it wouldn't be easy, but the cyberwarfare attack came as a complete surprise. The Hierarchy, like all the Council members, are forbidden from using AIs."

Shepard chewed on the ration bar, then nodded. "Probably sensible of you, actually. Once one side starts equipping their ships, it becomes an arms race that's almost impossible to win."

"How do you protect yourselves?"

"Either by having superior hardware, which is very difficult against Cerberus, or by dumbing our systems down. We've isolated all ship systems that don't need to be networked, and have an automatic switch to shut off all wireless access completely the moment a hostile target is detected. Any networking that needs to be done after that is done by hardlines. The AIs can't get to anything that won't accept an incoming signal."

"Ahh. Do you mind if I forward that to my superiors?" Which he would do either way, but it didn't hurt to be polite.

"Go right ahead. You would've figured it out eventually."

"Maybe. Before today, the only AI I ever fought against was a glorified gambling machine on the Presidium that somehow gained sentience. Until we discovered it, all it did was funnel credits. After we discovered it, it tried to blow us all up. Fortunately, I have some skill with percussive maintenance."

Commander Shepard chuckled. "You're lucky to survive a battle against EDI. She tends to prefer opening airlocks and venting the crew out."

"EDI? Is that the name of that _Normandy_ 's AI?"

"Yeah. Ruthlessly efficient, hopeless sense of humour."

His curiosity peaked. "You talk like you know her. If I may make that observation." Because getting off topic was probably a bad idea. He fiddled with the datapad. Shepard watched him, then simply shrugged.

"I do. Or did."

"That _Normandy_ used to be your ship," he concluded, and read the change to her face as either surprise, or embarrassment. Or both. Possibly neither. And talking about personal things was definitely a bad idea. Yet those glowing eyes didn't leave his, and she nodded.

"Yes, she was." She sounded sad. "I used to work for Cerberus, and the _Normandy_ was my ship."

"I have to admit, I'm curious. The first time I ever see a human ship, it gets fired on by another. It seemed personal." And his mind was just determined to avoid the gift list at all cost and start digging into the stuff that would cause an interstellar incident. Unrelenting curiosity was a useful trait during an investigation. During a negotiation, not to much.

"Personal... yes, and no." Shepard's hands wrapped around the water-glass. "Cerberus used to be allies of the Systems Alliance, and Miranda used to be my XO. She wasn't always trigger-happy like that. We were... well, I wouldn't say we were friends. I used to think she was a stuffed up brat, she thought I was an (warble) mongrel." She smiled. "But we worked together through a lot of hard missions." Her expression darkened. "But then Cerberus went rogue, and something changed. It wasn't just Miranda, it came down from the top of Cerberus' command. I was lucky to get out when I did. Some of my friends... didn't."

"I'm sorry," Garrus said, the condolence genuine. "Do you have any idea what happened?"

Shepard shook her head and leaned back in the seat, "I wish I knew. One day everything was fine and we were running cavalry raids on the Union's frontier. The next, she tells me she wants to upgrade my augments, and I wake up on the operating table with a control chip in my head."

"That's...." Barbaric? Horrendous? Vile? Garrus' vocabulary came up short. "I take it since she was shooting at you, it's gone now?"

"Yeah. It didn't take immediately, I had enough control to make it off the base. I don't know if there was a mistake during installation, or if Miranda sabotaged it on purpose as some last act of defiance." She sighed and looked down into the water-glass, eyelids sliding closed, hiding the glow. Garrus' intuition stirred.

"She's the one who gave you those eyes?"

"Yes," she said, and gave him a look he interpreted as curious, and possibly surprised. "How did you know?"

"Just a guess," he deflected, while mentally patting himself on the back for his ability to read humans. Or at least this human. "Are augments common among your people?" Just so he could give Valern a conniption fit by adding an estimated number of unregistered part-synthetics outside of Citadel jurisdiction.

"They're fairly common. If you want to be a super-soldier, then Cerberus is – was – the best choice. Always top of the line augments fresh out of R&D. They didn't skimp on the tech." Her shoulders rolled, as if that little movement said all there was to add. "Anyway, I'm telling you this because I figured you deserved to know who was shooting at you, and the reason why you almost lost your ship. Cerberus hates aliens. They won't parley with you, and they'll do their damnedest to prevent more alien influence on humanity. If your people enter Cerberus systems, you will get shot at. Fair warning."

"Appreciated."

"But not all of us kill on sight." She blinked one eye, very quickly. "I usually fire a warning shot first."

Garrus stared at her a moment before his mental library on human facial expressions came through, and he chuckled.

"Is human humour always about violence?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," she said, with a very much human smile, that Garrus was developing an affinity for. Then, she turned serious. "Lets talk business?"

Yes, Garrus informed his brain. No more distractions. "I'm assuming you already have a fair idea of why we're here?"

"Some, but we're shy on the details."

Garrus looked at the datapad with the half-finished, mostly useless speech, erased it, then started from the beginning, using his own words. As he laid the situation out, Shepard simply nodded, following his explanations without trouble, only asking for elaboration in some places. Garrus suspected he said a bit too much, or maybe a bit too earnestly. But this was for Palaven; Sparatus could go wash his face for all Garrus cared.

At the end of it all, Shepard looked thoughtful, and he found the lack of outright rejection encouraging. Anything else could be negotiated for.

"From what you're saying, the Krogan would need stopping sooner or later. Unless you're feeding me a line, it seems to me they won't stop at just Citadel space."

"Very unlikely, but our worlds will sate them for now."

"And the genophage, it won't work again?"

Garrus shook his head. "There was work being done on a modified genophage, to reinforce what was already in place, but it was rendered completely ineffectual by the cure. I'm told the salarians are scrambling to come up with a brand new one, but they're starting from scratch. We don't think they can finish it before the Krogan land on Sur'kesh.

Shepard nodded, one finger tapping against the datapad that held the gift list which she had been reading. Then she sighed. "It'll be up to my superiors, one way or the other, but this is a very generous gift. They will listen." Her eyes met his with a significant look, maybe a bit apologetic. "But you need to be aware that one of the things they will ask for as payment for committing ships is an agriculture-capable garden world, and it's the one thing they won't budge on."

"That is asking a lot," Garrus said, but without heat. Long as said world wasn't Palaven, it was fine with him. But the Council wouldn't be happy, no sir.

"I'm aware. But we need one, and I'll be honest with you – we're pretty desperate. About three weeks ago there was an attack against the planet Benning. It's the closest garden world to Arcturus, and the main breadbasket for the Systems Alliance. There was a ruse in a neighbouring system, the military governor's fleet went to investigate. While they were away, someone got a stealth ship into low orbit and deployed a bioweapon into the atmosphere. It's... some areas can still support growth with some work, and we've shipped every atmospheric renewer we have there. But the entire planet's season crop was lost."

Garrus sucked in a quick breath, and his head started spinning once the shock settled in. The Spectre part of his mind reluctantly added 'wilful destruction of planetary ecosystem' to his growing list of things he wouldn't enjoy putting in his report about the humans, but that the Council would need to know. 

"You don't know who it was?"

"No. But believe me, we're going to find out." That was a promise of murder.

Well. That explained why these humans were willing to negotiate, and why Shepard had been so insistent on defending the _Unconquerable_ to bring these negotiations about. She had as little choice as he did.

He gestured at the ration bar, mostly eaten. She hadn't seemed to devour it like someone who was starving, and she didn't seem malnourished – not that he was certain he'd recognise it if she was. "We don't have a lot of supplies on board, but if you need, they're yours."

Shepard shook her head. "I appreciate the offer, but it's not bad yet. We've got a lot stockpiled, other allied systems are chipping in, and we're raiding Union worlds for supplies. But for the long run, the closest available garden worlds we'd be able to hold on to without spreading our forces too thin are in or near Citadel space."

Garrus cynically noted that this would be the same part of Citadel space that was currently so lightly defended as to be an open buffet to an organised fleet. "Surprised you haven't moved in to take them already, if your people are desperate."

"There were some serious plans to," Shepard admitted easily, "but when the diplomats from the Citadel turned up, it was decided to give these negotiations a go. Fighting a war on multiple fronts is usually not a good idea."

Indeed not. "Don't suppose you know what happened to the diplomats? Apparently they returned with ruffled feathers, but I wasn't privy to the details."

There was that wry humour look on Shepard's face again. 

"Yeah, they ended up meeting the Reformists. They're xenophobic even against humans, and they definitely don't like aliens. But they don't have much in the way of a fleet either – they're dependant on the Systems Alliance for protection, which is why they let them go alive. Far as intel knows, your diplomats stumbled over them by pure chance."

"Reformists?"

"Yeah, our allies and part of the Exile alignment, but they mostly keep to themselves." She must've seen his curiosity peak, because she continued, "Believe it or not, Cerberus aren't the scariest monster in the valley. Kaidan, Commander Alenko? He's from the Humanity-Reformed colony of Eden Prime. It's one messed up place. They had several accidental eezo exposures many years ago when they were first setting up the colony, which resulted in a lot of biotics, our first generation of them. Apparently biotics was really interesting to someone in power, because then they started having 'accidents'," she did something with her fingers, emphasising that they weren't accidents after all, "and some time later they simply started deliberately exposing all pregnant women. Their neonatal mortality rate used to be horrendously high, but in the last decade they got the hang of it. Their entire youngest generation is biotic."

Garrus stared. Asari as a species were biotic because of their homeworld being eezo rich, they came by their biotics naturally. What Shepard was describing was... horrendous. That word seemed to pop up a lot in relation to the humans.

Shepard drew a breath to continue the explanation that wasn't quite over. "Us humans? We're considered adults around eighteen years old, but from about thirteen and up we have the physique and emotional stability needed to fight effectively if properly trained. The Reformists haven't been major players so far, but... soon, yeah, things might happen."

Garrus nodded in commiseration. That damn report Just Kept Growing. So naturally, he asked another question.

"Maybe you could tell me a bit about the different human...." What was the word again? "...factions? What is the Exile alignment?" Because he really needed to know these things before his people were committed to the humans for safety.

Shepard nodded, and took a drink of water before settling in for an explanation.

"We're the Systems Alliance, part of the Exile alignment. We're called that because we don't have any forces in the Sol system, where the human homeworld is. We used to be based on Earth, but when the fourth war started the Union alignment kicked us off the planet, making Arcturus our capital."

"Union alignment?"

"The factions that are based in Sol, or allied with the ones that are." She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. "Not all Union nations – factions – are at war with the Exile alignment, and not all Exile alignments are friendly to us – Cerberus is Exile, not Union, but they're not our allies in any way." She sounded rueful, and bit into the chewstick-of-a-ration bar.

"You're from Earth?"

"Yeah. I was raised in Vancouver, military capital of the Systems Alliance at the time. Conscripted at fifteen, shipped off to Arcturus for training. Then the fourth war started a few weeks later, the Union launched a surprise attack and nuked Vancouver. The objective was to break the Alliance's spine." She fixed him with a firm look. "It didn't work, it just made us more determined to win. But there was nothing left to hold on to, so we evacuated or went underground."

"So the Union has full control of your homeworld now?"

"Yes. Or at least mostly. There's a resistance movement, and some of the other Union nations aren't entirely friendly with each other. But... after the bombings, there's honestly not much left on the planet worth fighting for. For all intents and purposes, the Union capital is on Mars. Sol IV."

Heh, they had more in common with the Krogan than he had first realised.

"I'm sorry if I seem nosy, but a few days ago I had barely heard the word human, and now I'm talking to one who isn't pointing a gun at me. I'll stop asking stupid questions if want."

"It's alright," she tilted her head. "It's honestly better you get your facts from me. The Union has a pretty mean propaganda machine, I imagine some of the rumours about humanity are pretty far out there?"

"Yeah, some are," he said as nonchalantly as he could. Truthfully though, the facts – if what Shepard was telling him was true – was turning out far worse than the rumours.

His people needed allies, but Garrus was beginning to suspect this solution was not quite as brilliant as the Council had hoped.


	5. The Alliance

They talked for nearly an hour, and Shepard continued to be a font of information about humanity in general. In return, he answered a lot of questions regarding Citadel space, and the Citadel in particular. Her curiosity about the Keepers was oddly refreshing. Garrus had seen them every day since he'd first arrived from Palaven; they'd just faded into the background for him. Always there, but never worth any attention. He suspected that was how the protheans had intended it.

He'd just finished telling her a sad tale of the Keeper tunnels when Captain Cassius informed him over the comm that their systems diagnostic was complete and they were ready to jump to Arcturus.

"We're going to be challenged the moment we enter normal space," Shepard said as they left the Captain's quarters. "Let me do the talking."

The larger human had waited outside while they talked, and fell in line behind them as Garrus led the way to the bridge. He didn't consider until they actually got there whether Shepard would've preferred to watch the central sensor displays in the CIC instead. But she looked perfectly comfortable standing at ease next to the co-pilot chair where a nervous-looking systems tech was sitting.

Garrus didn't know whether it was him or her causing the nervousness, but he felt some of it as well. The pilot however was calmly announcing their routine approach run, not sounding at all like they were about to jump right into the varren's mouth.

The light of the mass relay loomed before them, but Garrus forced himself to look at the human commander instead. He wanted to see _her_ reaction to the miracle of space travel.

He wasn't disappointed. The moment the ship accelerated to amazing speeds of light, he saw the brief lift of her lips, the nearly imperceptible breath she drew, and his visor picked up just a touch of heat flushing over her skin, there and gone again. Her spirit definitely belonged to a spacer, whatever else she was.

The light vanished, replaced by the blackness of space. Garrus blinked hard to get his night-vision working again.

This time, space was not empty. He heard a gasp, not sure if it was the pilot or the tech, but he agreed with them. In front of them, on either side of the mass relay corridor, were two tube-shaped space fortresses. The design itself was completely alien to him, all bulky metallic angles, but mass accelerator gunports were universal. And they were aimed straight at the _Unconquerable_.

"Incoming transmission."

"Patch it through," he replied, sounding calm, even to himself.

The human voice was almost as bright as Shepard's. "Arcturus system control to unidentified ship, state your business."

"Channel's open," the pilot supplied quietly.

Shepard nodded and straightened, possibly unconsciously. "This is Commander Shepard on board turian Hierarchy ship _Unconquerable_. We're on a diplomatic mission, expected by the admiralty. Recognition code gamma seven seven niner, blue skies."

The investigator in Garrus filed her code away for future reference.

There was a pause before the reply came. "You're recognised, Commander. Standing down. Do you require escort or welcoming committee?"

Garrus was very willing to bet that said 'welcoming committee' was a euphemism for a firing squad.

"Negative, system control, this is not a prize ship, it's a guest."

"Acknowledged, stand by." More pause. Shepard started tapping her fingers against her thigh, and glared at Garrus when he grinned at her. So he wasn't the only one with short patience for bureaucratic routines.

Then the human voice on the other end came again, a bit lighter. "Uh, Admiral Hackett wants to know where the _Normandy_ is."

Shepard rubbed her forehead. "Tell him I'll tell him in person."

"Aye ma'am. Proceed to docking bay 54, on beacon whiskey blue. Arcturus system control out."

The channel closed, and Shepard leaned forward to point out the nav beacon for the pilot to follow. 

"Are you going to be in trouble for losing your ship?" Garrus asked, and realised his concern was genuine.

Shepard tilted her head in a very turian shrug. "They won't take my head, I'm too valuable. Besides, I've missed the food in the brig."

There was a snort from the large guard-human. "I haven't."

"Shush, Vega."

Garrus chuckled, and managed to wrangle his curiosity out of asking what the brig-time had been for. Instead, he turned his attention to the window and the navigation displays. For the first time, a Citadel ship was going to get a good look at a central human system – and live to tell the tale.

He didn't know what he had been expecting. A busy system, certainly, but he'd spent years on the Citadel where busy was the norm around the clock.

It certainly wasn't this. 

Space was vast and black, even in a solar system. From a ship, removed from a planet where the view of space was always drowned out by the local sun, you could see the galactic arms and all the stars, even the small and dim ones. At first, that's what he thought he was seeing as they cruised towards Arcturus – a sea of dazzling stars in all colours of the visual spectrum, against the backdrop of the galaxy.

Then he realised what he thought were stars were blinking, and moving. Some in clusters, some alone, some vanishing for a moment as something moved in front of them. These weren't just the few dozen running lights of another set of space fortresses they passed, nor just a few gas giants reflecting their star's glow.

There were hundreds of lights. Maybe over a thousand. And they weren't stars. They were ships.

The pilot gasped, and Garrus tore his eyes away from the window to watch the navigation display. Dots filled the screen, too many to count, most reading as unidentified. What he was seeing out the window were the after-images of their propulsion systems, the light several minutes old. On the screen were their FTL-transmitting transponders, effectively making them appear in two places at once.

This wasn't just a busy system. This was a major hub of civilisation.

It appeared chaotic at first glance, but the navigation computer easily parsed the data into clear designated space lanes, just like the one system control had instructed the _Unconquerable_ to follow, or into specific zones surrounding planets, orbital platforms, asteroids, and even more of the space fortresses that had guarded the mass relay.

He glanced up, and sure enough, those fortresses were visible to the naked eye, exactly where the sensors claimed they were. Not stealthed, a relieved voice at the back of his mind said. 

That voice was fooling itself; anything equipped with that many mass accelerator gunports, just barely visible at this range, didn't need stealth.

"I take it this system sees a lot of action?" he asked. He knew the human would know what he was referring to.

"Not these days. But before we put those up? Yeah, a lot. The Arcturus relay is omni-directional with several other relays in range, but the Sol relay is at the end of a chain, it only leads here. Strategically speaking, this system is a bottleneck against the Union. We don't let them to come through here, so they have to haul ass the long way around to the next Union-controlled relay." She grinned. "Which is also omni-directional, and in range of Arcturus."

Garrus did some quick alterations to his growing mental map of the human political situation. Bottleneck indeed. "Where I'm from, we call that a 'being surrounded'," he noted dryly.

Shepard simply chuckled.

They shared the vista in silence as they continued deeper into the system, the distance to their destination – now showing clearly on the nav display – shrinking from the thousand millions to the hundred thousands.

"Something is approaching us," the pilot informed them, and pointed on the display for Garrus' benefit. He peered at the readouts at the same time as his earpiece relayed Argosa informing Captain Cassius of the same thing.

"Looks like they want to be sure we aren't _trojans_ ," Shepard said thoughtfully, probably unaware her phrase hadn't translated. "Let me speak with your Captain." On the pilot's nod that the voice capture was on she continued, "Captain, your ship is about to be hard-scanned by a pair of sensor drones. Nothing to worry about, but they might disrupt some ship systems for a few seconds. They just want to be sure we are who we say we are."

"I see. Thank you."

"'Trojans'?" Garrus asked once the speakers were silent.

Shepard took a moment to answer, as if she wasn't sure how to explain. "Ships that pretend to be something else. Usually warships made up to look like merchant ships, but sometimes merchant ships that've been equipped with weapons in their cargo space." She shrugged. "Or just a ship with a curious transponder signal. They know I'm supposed to be bringing you in, but... well. Yeah."

The two drones closed to what constituted poking range in space. The nav console flickered for a moment, but that seemed to be the extent of the disruption. Then they dashed off again. Garrus was pretty certain it was no coincidence that they had come to take a look at the _Unconquerable_ before it entered long distance weapons' range of Arcturus station.

They passed into the true heart of the Arcturus system a few minutes later, and with proximity came clarity. Many of the constant blinking lights were a steady stream of tow tugs dragging small resource satellites – little more than rocks, from the asteroid belt towards what appeared to be construction docks in the vicinity of Arcturus station.

Yet many more were from the mad dance of many dozens of ships in outer orbit of the capital space station, or on their way in or out of dock. Shepard had said the fleet was still back at Arcturus, and that seemed entirely true. Most ships were human, a mix of familiar universal space and space-and-atmosphere designs, and unfamiliar angles and layouts. Their ships made him think of birds in some way, narrow fores and wider afts, and all were built along a long axis to allow for maximum mass accelerator power.

Argosa probably didn't even have time to swear for all the scanning and cataloguing. Given the amount of transponders, there weren't many stealthed.

And then the world ceased to make sense. Garrus saw a small group of four ships in formation pass them in visual range. Bulky, clumsy – to his opinion ugly – batarian merchant freighters, led by a batarian merchant cruiser. Smaller than its turian counterpart, but well enough armed to make pirates think twice. He glanced at the nav display, and sure enough. Hegemony registry. He'd known the batarians traded with the humans, just not how extensive that trade must be for there to be three freighters with an escort.

Had that been the only surprise....

Looking around at the orbiting spacecrafts, he recognised several more hulls. No more turian ships like the _Normandy_ , but a long, sleek salarian merchant courier, and a pair of hanar relay-hoppers. They were small ships, and if they hadn't passed close enough to _see_ the hulls, he wouldn't have been able to identify them.

Something was off though. 

"What does the blue lines painted on the hull mean?" he asked Shepard curiously. Both the hanar ships and the salarian had them, but none of the human or batarian ships did.

"They're System Alliance prize ships."

She'd used that word before, he recalled. "Prize ships, does that mean they were captured, like your _Normandy_?"

"Yes," she admitted easily. No hesitation at confessing to piracy there. "The blue stripes are heat conductive, they show up as lines on scanners. We put them on ships that aren't immediately recognisable as ours because they still have a lot of original hardware. Just as a heads up they haven't been completely converted."

"I see." Because only a paranoid species would need the extra FoF recognition, as if another pair of space fortresses coming into view wasn't enough. They were spaced evenly in a protective sphere around the capital station and the surrounding floating hives, or hubs, of long, finger-shaped space drydocks, like spines and ribcages enveloping the ships within them. Each one contained a ship, either being constructed or refitted.

And in one of the space docks was an exotic ship configuration with a large spherical fore. No blue lines that he could see.

"That's a quarian ship. What's it doing here?"

"They rent yard time in exchange for H-3 fuel supplies and up-to-date starcharts. Our scouts don't have the range that the quarians do. We had to discover the relay network system by system before we met them."

A neat system. Pilgrims brought valuable info back to the fleet, the fleet then traded that info to the humans at a decent rate. That also hadn't been in his intel.

Quarians and batarians in the same system without shooting at each other? Quarians receiving quality retrofits? Batarians trading peacefully? Oh, he could see the implications of this. A stable trading partner, one that looked the other way against some of the Hegemony's offences, would have a stabilising influence on both of them, and stability would lead to fewer pirates and raiders, which in turn was why the Citadel space's back door hadn't been pried open.

The things you found out. Why had the Council ignored the humans for so long?

By then he thought he was all out of surprise, and they were nearing their final point on the beacon leading them to their dock.

Then Shepard leaned forward and looked up. Garrus mirrored her to see what had gotten her attention.

At first he thought it was just another fortress, but the design wasn't the oblong tubes that had dotted the path from the mass relay. It was something else, something inelegant, as though someone had taken a bird of prey, turned it into metal, then bolted armoured plates all over it until its original form was hidden and forgotten.

Then he saw the glow of propulsion thrusters, far larger than a space station would possibly have.

That was a ship. A massive one. Garrus quenched a nervous fidget. It was difficult to tell size in space just by visual, but you could still make a decent guesstimate by looking at thrusters, gunports, and similar things that were generally uniform in size due to the laws of physics, and there were several other ships working on it, providing reference points. It dwarfed them all, and the drydock seemed to have been constructed around it and expanded as the ship grew.

He glanced at Shepard. She'd been looking at him. She had to know exactly what this display was telling them, there was no way she'd be unaware what they were thinking.

"I have to ask," he said. Shepard nodded.

"That's the Victory class super-dreadnought SSV _Vancouver_ , the first of her kind. Two point three kilometers bow to aft, four point one million metric tonnes, crew of five thousand."

She'd said their enemies bombed the city of Vancouver, so they named a ship like it. Just like the two _Normandy_. Patterns, Garrus liked patterns.

His eyes reluctantly returned to the ship. He couldn't be sure just by looking at it, but judging by the number of mass accelerator gunports, torpedo tubes and laser turrets he could see, that thing might very well meet the _Destiny Ascension_ for firepower. Possibly even surpass it.

But, he reminded himself sternly, visuals said very little about what was under the hood.

Still....

"Time to completion?"

"Three to four weeks until the final plate, another couple of weeks for internal systems. Shakedown cruise scheduled in two months." She gave him a long look. "But some of the weapons systems, targeting arrays, and basic maneuvering thrusters are already online. We've had far too many cavalry raids to let even ships in in drydock be blind and toothless."

Garrus nodded, and wondered again at human intel penetration. The Hierarchy had found that out the hard way; the Krogan had launched a suicide raid on one of the Hierarchy's largest shipyards. Krogan casualties had been 100%, but they had only lost ships and warriors. The turians had lost more than half of their _total_ ship production capacity, not counting the loss of several half-to-nearly finished ships that would've joined the front in the not too far future, and, more importantly, the ship designers and construction workers that had the skills to build those ships. If the Hierarchy hadn't believed the system to be impenetrable, if they had employed a little bit of human paranoia, then maybe the Hierarchy wouldn't have to ask the humans for help.

"Why are you showing us this? You could've specified we drop you off at some remote station to do the negotiations, kept all of this hidden." He didn't have to tell her the Citadel had had no intel on any of this until now.

"Because I wanted to dispel you of the notion that we are natives to be enthralled by shiny baubles. And because Miranda was right about one thing." Shepard's voice was still pleasant, but there was an undercurrent of something hard beneath. "We're not anyone's puppets."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Codex Entry: Systems Alliance system control identification.
> 
> Due to the rising prevalence of Alliance capture of "prize ships", partially or fully operational ships that sometimes still have a hostile crew on board, either in stocks or operating the ship under coercion, all unidentified ships are expected and required to identify themselves on entry to any system under Systems Alliance control, on penalty of death. Every command level officer has a personal recognition code consisting of a three or four digits depending on rank, a Greek letter signifying primary military branch, followed by one of two codes:
> 
> \- Blue skies, meaning the ship is under solid Alliance control. (Blue is the primary colour of the Alliance)  
> \- Clear skies, meaning the ship is not under Alliance control, and the commanding officer is acting under duress. This code results in the immediate destruction of the ship by system defenders. ("Clearing the sky")


	6. The Station

Arcturus was something of a curiosity from the inside. It wasn't run down, exactly. It didn't have the Citadel's cleanliness and spotless perfection, but it was still a far cry from somewhere like Omega – which was a mental association Garrus drew solely due to the amount of batarians he spotted on the walk from the docking bay to the elevator that would take them to the ruling center of Arcturus. It was well-illuminated, save for the places where a light fixture or two were broken; it was uniformly built, except for a suddenly walled off section with an out of place section seal. It was clean, aside from one or two corners with piles of collected junk, mostly metal frames and other hard pieces.

But what he really noticed were the repair works. Any station not kept by the Keepers was bound to have spots of irregular maintenance, and Arcturus was no exception. There were jury-riggings and spit-and-string solutions where repairs were for convenience. But they'd passed a section seal airlock being tended by a repair crew, and while Garrus was hardly an expert on human technology, he could spot a brand new piece of gear when he saw it. Considering that the section seal would save lives if the docking bay was punctured, it was a reasonable precaution to keep it in best possible condition.

And the humans themselves? Even just one glance at the dozen or so humans working in and around the docking bay told Garrus that the intel file had been everything but complete or thorough. The diverse skin and hair were easy to pick out even to a species-blind person, but those were simply features. What someone like Garrus looked at was the way a person moved, how they interacted with their environment, how they reacted to new stimulus.

The military crew of the _Normandy_ had been in a tense situation, yet had reacted to being brought on board the _Unconquerable_ with nothing more than closed off wariness, and their discipline had been maintained throughout the trip.

These humans in the docking bay, dressed for cargo work, were on their home turf, in numerological superiority, and they knew it.

Most of them looked up as he and Commander Shepard passed, trailed at a distance by Vega, Shepard's ever-present shadow, and Alenko, the second-in-command. And none of the watchers were shy about it. Some stared, eyes intent on him; others glanced at him, formed an opinion, then went right back to work. Some simply saw he was with people in hardsuits and dismissed him from their attention.

They saw him as a curiosity, yes. But not a threat, and nothing to get hostile about. And he got the distinct impression they had a fair idea he was a turian. Or just didn't care.

Garrus had no idea if that was good or bad, though he supposed anything that wasn't mortal panic or a murderous rampage was a positive thing.

And besides, security was tight – there had been armed and armoured guards in every intersection and other strategic position. It was possible they'd been assigned there simply because he was going to pass through, but he didn't think so. For one, he'd seen one guard arguing with a mechanic working on a decrepit cargo hauler that Garrus judged was never going to function again. His skill at picking out human body-language was increasing exponentially, and he had been good at it to begin with. That had been friendly, and familiar, banter.

Strange as it was, he was ridiculously relieved to see the humans acting so turian.

They'd just reached a central elevator when suddenly the easily recognisable voice of a quarian was calling after them, followed by the quarian herself at a jog. She was in a simple suit, likely a pilgrim.

"Shepard! Shepard, what did you do to the _Normandy_!?"

Shepard stroked her cheek awkwardly. "News travels fast."

"Not as fast as you think. I was waiting for you at your regular berth. I figured you would manage to scratch the paint even on a _simple diplomatic mission_ , but then I found out you were in-system without your ship..." She sounded sad. Quarians and ships, Garrus mused.

Shepard put her hand on the quarian's shoulder, sounding sympathetic. "I'll tell you later, okay Tali? I have to get Garrus here to the Admiralty board before they die of old age."

The quarian's helmet turned Garrus' his direction, and he saw the piercing glow of her eyes focus on him. "Turian." No love lost there. But one didn't spend years as a cop without learning to ignore petty provocations.

"Quarian," he replied easily. "Fancy meeting one of you here."

"This isn't the Citadel," she said, voice sharp. "I'd watch my step if I were you. You never know when someone might shoot you and security just decides to not care."

Oh, that explained things. The quarians hadn't been held in high regard for the past few centuries. Some of it had been deserved – when the preservation of your culture and species as a whole was on the line, people tended to get... desperate, something he was getting first-hand experience with now. But a lot of it hadn't been deserved. She was probably owed an apology she would never get.

"I'd have to care," Shepard said, neatly stepping in, voice lighter in a gentle reproach. The quarian's head swung her way. Shepard put her hand on her shoulder. "Tali, I'm really sorry, we have to get going. The rest of my crew is still disembarking, I'm sure Joker would love to see you." Her voice dropped, and sounded drier. "I may have broken his arm again."

"Shepard..." the quarian complained, apparently well-versed in her human friend's propensity towards destruction that Garrus was becoming slowly acquainted with. "I'll go see him. Talk to you later."

She turned to walk away. In the next beat, Garrus decided he should at least try to set right an old wrong.

"Tali?" he said, using her familiar name since he didn't know her full. She spun around, body tensing. Garrus softened his voice, and spoke with sincerity. "For what it's worth, I would have cared."

Tali froze for a moment, looking right at him. Without the ability to read her face it was fiendishly hard to tell what was going through her mind. But then her body language relaxed, barely perceptively, and she nodded. The gesture was careful, uncertain, but there.

It was nowhere near the fresh start the Council would need to extend to the quarians as a consequence of the quarian cooperation with the humans, but it was _a_ start.

"Cop?" Shepard asked after the elevator doors closed and she keyed in their destination.

"C-Sec," he confirmed. "Citadel security."

"Really? You don't strike me as the type."

Great, even the human was catching on. "Yes, really. I wanted to make a difference, and that's where people who want to make a difference go."

"But not stay?"

Definitely catching on. "I may have stayed for a few years too many. Then I realised I didn't just want to make a difference, I wanted to be the one to create the opportunity for it, the one who made it all possible in the first place, then saw it through and dealt with the consequences. That's why I became a Spectre."

"Nice speech," she quipped with the quirky grin.

"Thank you."

* * *

The elevator switched directions no less than three times, the shifts barely perceptible except to someone who had spent, well, a lot of time in some very classy elevators. Garrus couldn't tell where exactly they were going however, and when the elevator deposited them at their destination it was like walking into an entirely different station. A far cry from the mismatched docking section, this place – what he realised must be one of the hearts of human civilisation – wasn't just well-maintained but had the same sense of dignity and honoured traditions as the Citadel's Tower did. The lights were bright but not sharp and the walls were the colour and texture of dark wood, richly lined with big-leaved potted plants. In a few places there were wall-fountains where water ran down the walls into basins, creating the optical illusion that made him think of underground tunnels.

Was this an artificial approximation of the humans' natural habitat? Or just someone's idea of proper interior architecture? Impossible to tell from the information on hand. He glanced down the corridor. A short distance away was a set of ornamental, but functional, double doors with four guards outside.

Between the miniature waterfalls were art displays, some still images hanging on the walls, some holographics projected in the air, some physical statues or models, and some charts of some kind. He couldn't read any of the information listed about the displays, but he could look at the pictures. To his surprise, he could place or recognise quite a bit – mass relays looked identical in all parts of the galaxy, and primitive machinery tended to be somewhat uniform in shape due to the limitations imposed on primitive species by the laws of physics. (It had never seemed to apply to the asari however, whose entire species had evolved in a counter-mass/gravity environment.)

Some images looked amazingly dated, though something about the displays twigged at him. After a moment of thinking about it as they walked passed at a dignified speed, he realised they looked dated to _him_ because of the image quality. It had been millennia since any image-capturing device had rendered images at that low detail.

"If I can ask," he said, getting Shepard's attention and pointing at the graphic display that showed a narrow rocket of some kind against a rich blue sky, just at the moment of ignition. "How long ago was that?"

"Hm?" She stopped and read the display. "That's the Vostok One-" Garrus' translator dutifully reproduced the word phonetically, "-the first human spaceflight in 1961, so a bit over two hundred years ago."

Garrus stared. Then he raised his omni-tool and fed the numbers straight into the batarian-originated unit converter, just in case it was a mistranslation.

It wasn't.

"You're telling me your species wasn't in space – at all – until two hundred years ago?"

"That's right." Shepard crossed her arms, as if daring him to challenge the facts. He didn't. Though that did explain why the humans' expansion had remained largely unknown – blink and you miss it. The Attican Traverse had been on the Citadel Space's do-not-enter list for quite a while longer than that. The asari might remember why that was, but no one else alive did.

"That's a very rapid development," Garrus noted neutrally, curiosity straining. It could account for why they were having civil wars, too. A species was only as ready as its least developed factions – the Unification wars in his own history, and the many, many planetary wars before that – proved that. But unlike his own people who were at least a thousand years removed from their past, humans it seemed were still living in theirs. Had they been uplifted by someone? He didn't think the batarians would leave a neophyte race alone if they felt more powerful, and the quarians nomadic status was almost as recent as the human expansion. That left... oh no.

How to ask?

"If I may ask, what was the breakthrough?"

Shepard uncrossed her arms and looked about to say something, when one of the other two with her broke into the silent conversation. They shared a brief session of bodylanguage-communication that Garrus wasn't entirely privy to. It looked like the second-in-command wanted to say something, but Shepard was reluctant to let him. Garrus didn't have enough clues to piece together what the deal was, but apparently something was worked out between them because it was the XO who spoke.

"We discovered the ruins of an old space-faring civilisation on Sol IV. Some kind of archive that had been there for millennia. Definitely pre-historic."

Yep. _Protheans_. Dead for something like 50,000 years, and they still managed to alter the balance of galactic politics.

Garrus' brain helpfully supplied the memory of being informed that the Union's capital was on Sol IV. He was willing to bet they were squatting in or around those very Prothean archives. And he was absolutely certain the Council would be just _thrilled_ to hear the humans had access to working Prothean technology, and were actively studying it.

"Ah, I see. Thank you. I was just curious."

The XO gave him a watchful, weighing look. It seemed like he'd expected something specific and not gotten it. Possibly confirmation on whether or not Garrus' people knew anything about these mysterious ancient alien benefactors littering the the galaxy with their ruins. Was he suspicious of Garrus' reaction for some reason? Maybe he shouldn't have been quite so non-committal about it. You told a barefaced by the lack of paint, after all.

It was Shepard who spared him from having to figure it out with a simple, "Come on."

Security to the inner sanctum of human civilisation was both heavier and lighter than he had expected. He didn't miss the feel of the weapon scanners as they approached the door, or the way the guards went from alert but relaxed, to alert and watchful. Or, except for the off chance he was mistaken, the automated weapons hidden behind the wooden wall panels.

The guards were very thorough in determining the identities of his three human escorts. Expecting more _trojans_ perhaps?

Yet they let Garrus keep his side-arm, and barely gave his bioreadings more than a perfunctory scan. Though maybe not so strange given that they wouldn't have anything to compare it _to_.

And then they were let inside, and Garrus put his Spectre face on.


	7. The Admiralty Board

The theme of wood, water, and history continued into the center of the humans' seat of rule, lending the place a sombre dignity with an undercurrent of power. Like Garrus' own councils' chambers, this place had been designed to be its own last line of defence. The split walkways, rising stairs and multiple levels provided defenders plenty of choke-points and fallbacks, and the sniper in Garrus picked out half a dozen _very_ attractive perches along an upper level walkway. Some of which were already occupied by humans. From that upper level hung simple but elegant cloth banners, uniform in shape but each one different in motif. Some of the few he could spot without swinging his head around too much had star constellations in them. Alliance member banners, probably.

There were a lot of them. Did each represent a nation or a colony world? He itched to start recording with his visor for future reference; they were far too numerous for him to memorise. But he did have some sense of what not to do to mess this up – recording, even just their publicly displayed banners, could easily be interpreted as spying.

The defendable layout aside, Commander Shepard seemed to know her way around, easily leading them up the stairs and through the choke points. As they scaled the final set of stairs and came to the chamber proper, high and wide and impressive, there was also a suspiciously empty space among the banners not too far from the center, behind the podium dominating the far end of the grand room. A defector faction? Cerberus perhaps?

The Admiralty Board seemed to be already holding a session; there were a number of humans milling about, wearing soft cloth uniforms rather than the combat hardsuits Shepard and her crew wore.

The five members of the board looked as sombre and dignified as Garrus had expected, same dark blue uniforms with golden highlights, probably rank or status insignia of some kind. Aside from some lines in their faces and paleness of their hair, he couldn't see anything in particular setting them apart from the other humans he'd seen in appearance. Were these old humans? Except for the one on the outer corner.

They were speaking with someone already at the center of the floor - he noted the distinct lack of chairs, likely on purpose - giving him a moment to surreptitiously look around without appearing to be gawking. If he wasn't concerned with appearances he would be examining the room in detail – but a Spectre of the Citadel Council couldn't afford to look like a kid at the amusement faire.

In contrast, their four-person entourage weren't attracting attention – well, they _were_ , but it wasn't the kind of, 'Hey come look at the weird alien' attention he'd anticipated.

Not even a sense of the buzz that they'd been expecting someone important. Were they suppressing the need for aid? Did he need to take that into account?

Shepard nodded at him, speaking quietly. "Allow me to introduce to you my bosses, the Systems Alliance Admiralty Board. The one in the middle is Admiral Anderson, he's the chairman. On his left is Admiral Hackett, he's the one in charge of external fleet operations. When we go to war, he's the one who'll be commanding the fleet."

The one she'd been bluffing about. Garrus nodded.

"Then there's Admiral Mikhailovich of home fleet, Admiral Sanders of R&D, and..." She trailed off, glancing at her XO. "Kaidan, do you recognise the last one?"

The one Garrus had thought didn't look as aged as the others.

"Captain Parasini. She's the acting head of Intel division."

"What's she doing sitting in for Admiral Kahoku?"

"Kahoku flushed out a pair of Cerberus infiltrators a few weeks ago. He vanished the day before we left. I think we can guess."

"...damn."

Interesting. And worrying.

And then the center floor cleared, and Shepard nudged him to follow her forward, into the waiting gaze of her admirals.

This was it. This was what he had come here to do. Talk to these humans, ask them for help – beg them if necessary. Their stares were expectant, but unimpressed. They had no appreciation of the turians having provided the backbone of defence to civilised space for several millennia, no insight into the stabilising effect Spectres had for all of the galaxy. No shared history, no shared experiences, which led to no shared understanding. He was just an alien to them. And the future of his people hung in the balance.

_No pressure, Garrus._

He took out his datapad, looked at the first lines he'd written...

...and decided it was all crap, again. Maybe he could try to talk to them like he did his own council? He had plenty of practice doing that. They were usually completely unimpressed by his attempts at rousing oration, but somehow he generally managed to make his point with them.

It would probably make quite a first impression, considering his talent for exasperating them.

_They should have sent a diplomat. At least the humans would be eating someone else alive instead of me._

He drew a breath.

_Palaven depends on you._

"Honoured leaders of the Systems Alliance, on behalf of the Citadel Council, I thank you for agreeing to see me. I'm Garrus Vakarian, special tactics and recon. I've come to ask you to hear the Citadel Council's request for your aid."

Dry, formal, to the point. His father would've been proud.

The human in the middle of the podium leaned forward, clasping his hands in front of him. "I understand you want to barter for the assistance of our fleets."

...oh. That worked, too. Though he wished he hadn't used 'barter' that way, but Garrus reminded himself to not get stuck on individual words while using an uncertified translator.

"Yes, Admiral. We're in a bit of a bind," _No, Garrus, too informal._ "We're under attack from an invading force, who'll soon reach our homeworld. They're ruthless, and they're not attacking us because we are a threat to them; they're attacking us for something our ancestors did, thousands of years ago. They won't settle for neutralising us, they'll annihilate us if they can. The losses will be horrible. Our fleet won't be able to stop them."

He was fairly sure by now the humans didn't see the concepts of acceptable losses and proportional response to a threat quite the way his people did, but he still needed them to understand it wasn't losing a battle or a war he was concerned about; it was losing his civilisation as a whole, who were the native species to the world being fought over. Could be an important distinction. "We need your help."

They exchanged looks between each other - no surprises about his request, alright. It was the human woman on the end of the board who spoke. "We'll need to know more."

"Of course." He outlined the situation in broad strokes. The genophage, the completely unexpected cure whose origins were still unknown. The unification of the Krogan Clans, and the retaliatory war that was now threatening to look like a massacre - though he assumed the Council wouldn't want him to make the Citadel defence force look too weak and tried to play that aspect down. But he didn't mince words about the Krogan fleets heading for Palaven. If they were going to agree to help, they needed to know what they were getting into.

When he got to the part about the compensation his people were willing to offer, Shepard transferred the list he'd showed her to the admirals, who... glanced at it.

"Can your people still provide us compensation?" the one Shepard had called Mikhailovich asked. "Seems to me if your worlds are falling to the Krogan forces, we should be in negotiations with them instead."

An argument he'd prepared for. "The Krogan aren't interested in negotiations, not from their position of power." And not on a normal day, either. "For now, they're focusing their attention on military targets," because they _really_ wanted revenge, and the Hierarchy forces stood in their way of getting it. "It's only without aid we would lose the ability to compensate you duly."

Garrus considered for a moment. Time to put things on the table. "In addition to the list you've been given, maybe we can help you. I understand from what I've gleaned of your current situation," of course, saying he knew they were in deep shit might have been a bad idea. Well, too late to back out now, "that you're low on food supplies. My people's allies are capable of fielding large quantities of aid to disaster areas. They wouldn't turn down a genuine request."

Famine was nearly unheard of in the Asari Republics. Whatever else you thought about their tight grip on Citadel's economy, there was always that.

Captain Parasini's voice was dry. "With respect to your generous offer, we're not in need of humanitarian aid that can later be withdrawn to influence us."

That was a little too prescient for Garrus tastes.

Parasini continued, "Perhaps when our peoples have had more history together we can discuss longer-term trade agreements. But at this point, it's in our interests the compensations we're provided are tangible and more permanent in nature, with a clear ownership change. I'm sure you can understand our position."

"Yes, Captain."

"Which is why we wish ownership of these three star systems." She keyed her console and displayed a galaxy map of the border systems between Citadel Space and the Attican Traverse.

He was glad he'd taken the time to talk to Shepard - he was really glad Shepard had prepared him for the request for a garden world; he wasn't sure he could've kept a neutral face to their upfront demand. Three systems, not just one world. Not surprising - ask for more than you need, settle for what you do. Common negotiating tactic. But a little hard to stomach all the same.

"It's... a big request," he said. "But I'm certain the Council can provide you with one, at the very least." At least he hoped so. He didn't see how he could not agree to that, the clock was ticking. Agree now, let the Council ream him out later if it turned out he'd overstepped his bounds.

"In addition," Admiral Anderson said, hands still interlocked in front of him, speaking smoothly, "The deployment of our fleets is going to cause a lot of ripples in the political landscape." He wasn't exaggerating about that, Garrus thought. "To make our transition into Citadel space and politics easier, we would like an embassy on the Citadel, as soon as one can be effectively established."

"That can be arranged," Garrus said, glad there was something he could agree to easier. The Council liked having embassies to the extended Citadel charter signatories, territories and protectorates. It gave them something to withdraw when species made mistakes, like the quarians, and someone to nag when they were up to no good, like the batarians.

"Excellent. Captain Parasini, anything else?"

"No, Admiral. I believe this compensation, with one garden-world system, should suffice."

Garrus blinked. That easy?

"Good. Admiral Hackett?" The chairman turned to his colleague. "Your assessment? Can we provide the help they need?"

He'd expected to haggle for quite a while. What?

He had to force his mind to listen to Admiral Hackett instead of chasing the surprise.

"We can't afford to take more than Fifth fleet, not after Shepard stirred the hornet's nest. If either Cerberus or Udina realise we have committed significant forces elsewhere, they will not waste the opportunity."

"We can't afford anything but clear victory, either," Admiral Anderson said, turning to Garrus. "How accurate are your estimates of the enemies forces? Without the (warble), please. We need accurate numbers to protect both our peoples."

"As accurate as they can be, you have my word. I have been out of contact with my superiors since my mission began, and lines of communication were breaking down even before I left, but it's unlikely the Krogan have received reinforcements in significant quantities. They're in this all or nothing."

The biggest possible change was to the size of the Hierarchy fleet. Recall orders had gone out to every ship, but the brutal speed of the war hadn't afforded the task groups that were several weeks out of port enough time to return to the nearest relay chain. And the remaining shipyards were churning out ships as fast as they could, but were limited by the resources.

"How much help can your other Citadel allies be expected to provide?"

"Not much. The war is making waves, the other Council members can't afford to leave the Citadel or their respective worlds undefended." The Salarian Union in particular was being reluctant to release ships from Sur'Kesh's system, fearing perhaps being the target of a blitz attack. Unless Garrus was missing his mark, there was friction in the Council over the divided fleets - but that was a problem far above his paygrade.

"I see. I understand your military is the most vital part of the Citadel's defences, without it, the Citadel is vulnerable?"

"Yes, we're the main peacekeeping force." A failure that was going to be recorded in history and debated among historians for a very long time forward. Garrus had his own theories of what had gone wrong - who didn't? - but none worth sharing while the Krogan fleets were approaching his homeworld. Later, maybe.

Admiral Hackett was silent, reading the console in front of him. At length, he nodded. "We can do it."

Admiral Anderson put it to the vote, that was short and to the point; five in favour. Garrus exhaled, a mountain of stones falling off his back.

_I did it._

"Thank you, on behalf of the Hierarchy, and the Citadel Council." Was his voice trembling? He didn't think so. That had been much easier than he'd thought.

"I'll need a few hours to mobilise the fleet," Hackett said and stood, leaving with some of the people who'd been watching the proceedings. Garrus mourned the lack of nearby chairs and spent a quiet moment alone in his mind, wondering what he was going to do with the sudden release of tension. At his side, Shepard gave him a quiet, bolstering nod.

"Just one more thing while you're here, Shepard," Admiral Anderson said as the crowd had mostly dispersed, getting her attention. "We need to discuss the loss of the _Normandy_."

The smile she worked up looked fake even to Garrus. "Yes, sir."

He was about to open his mouth and say something about how the Hierarchy appreciated the sacrifice on their behalf, when someone tapped Garrus on the shoulder. He turned to Vega, who was pointing at the exit with a thumb. "How 'bout you and me wait outside?"

It took more effort than it should have for Garrus to follow him.


	8. The Report

The guards posted outside the Admiralty Board's chambers sealed the doors behind Garrus as soon as he was through.

He'd done it. Really done it. Help was coming.

He hadn't used to be this prone to nerves; too much time on the sniper's perch. But it was hard not to let himself feel the giddiness.

And now he didn't know what to do but wait. He glanced back at the doors. It made sense to close the proceedings to just the military members involved, but Shepard had lost her ship protecting him; he sincerely hoped the admirals would take that into consideration, even without him there.

Vega wandered a distance away from the doors, then held position near a junction, looking in no hurry to go elsewhere.

Well, if Garrus was going to have to wait, he might as well make use of the time. The displays were interesting enough, but Shepard's watcher was looking a lot more approachable now that he was on home turf and his charge safe - relatively speaking.

Garrus figured he'd start with something nice and simple first to warm him up and hopefully get him more cooperative. At least he hoped it would; he was fairly sure he was right, but sometimes societies were odd - what he thought was a status symbol might be a source of shame. "If you don't mind me saying, you're a bit larger than other humans I've seen."

"Eh?" He looked perplexed a moment, then settled on amused. "Uh, yeah. Thanks. It took some work."

_Oh dear, did I just hit on him?_

"I'm sorry, was that inappropriate?"

Vega smiled. "Maybe something you shouldn't tell people randomly, yeah." He rolled his shoulders demonstratively, hardsuit creaking. "I don't mind though."

Good, situation salvageable. "Thanks. After all the excitement in there, I'd hate to find out I've been reading humans wrong all along." He knew he hadn't. He knew he was missing nuances, but he felt increasingly comfortable with the broad strokes. Not to mention happy with how they were receiving him close to what he intended. He fired up his just-a-question repertoire from years as an investigator. "If you don't mind, could I ask you something I've been curious about, completely off the record?"

Vega shrugged again. "Sure? I might not answer, but ask away."

"You and Commander Shepard. Are you guarding her to keep others away, or to keep her in?" He adopted a sheepish look, making himself seem unthreatening. "Don't worry, it's just for my personal reference."

"Hmm. A bit of both."

Garrus waited, but it seemed nothing else was forthcoming. "Because of Cerberus?"

The human paused, mouth open, looking like he was processing his answer. "Umm..."

"She told me she escaped from Cerberus," Garrus added, just in case that was the issue.

Vega nodded, apparently satisfied with that. "Yeah, Cerberus is a bit pissed that she left. She gave them a solid kick in the nuts - and took a lot of secrets with her on her way out the door. So she's got a big bullseye painted on her."

"And it's your job to make sure they fail." Knowing Cerberus had killed a Board Admiral, the guard seemed like a sensible precaution.

"Damn straight. But not everyone's convinced she left Cerberus for real, either. So I keep an eye on her to keep em happy."

Something in the way he said the last bit... some dissension in the ranks, maybe? "What do you think?"

The human snorted. "I don't think Shepard could act if her life depended on it. Bluff? Sure. Clam up? Hell yeah. She'll take a secret to the grave if she has to and nobody'll ever know. She's damn tough. Don't tell her I said that though. But act? Nah. She's Alliance through and through."

And she had one very loyal guard.

Garrus asked some more questions as they waited. Vega was a good source for random tidbits, but not much for providing answers with context.

It was closer to half an hour later when the doors finally opened again, Shepard exiting with her XO in tow. Garrus didn't have that many examples of how humans looked when they were emotionally ruffled, but was fairly sure that's what he was looking at right then. That couldn't have been an easy talk.

But then her expression changed the moment she spotted him and Vega; to what, he wasn't entirely sure. Maybe she hadn't expected them to still be waiting? She nodded and indicated the way to the elevators.

"Come on, Spectre, let's get you back to your ship so you can call your people. Anderson's given your Captain access to the comm buoy."

"Appreciated." He thought for a moment. "How did things go? If I'm allowed to ask?"

She shrugged. "No worse than usual. Besides, 'eezo miner' will look great on my résumé."

Garrus examined her face, but couldn't quite tell whether or not she was joking. Apparently her XO could though.

"That's not funny, Shepard."

"Relax, Alenko. You worry too much." She slapped his arm, and Garrus could read that bit of overly-casual body-language communiqué loud and clear; 'not in front of the alien'.

But, well, the alien was already involved. He cast about for something to say, and the idea came to him just as the elevator doors closed.

"In my excitement, I forgot to ask your admirals something. When the Citadel does multi-faction cooperative operations, we usually assign a liaison to help with coordination, and prevent misunderstandings." True, technically. "I was hoping, since you've already been on our ship, that it would be you."

"Huh." She looked surprised, then thoughtful.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," Alenko said carefully, but sounding decided despite the mild wording.

"I'll ask," Shepard said, overriding him. "It's not like they're shipping me off to the mines today."

"Good." Garrus tipped his head. "Because, no offence intended, but you don't look like a miner."

Shepard had a very delightful chuckle.

* * *

The humans escorted him all the way to the airlock. On the ship, Captain Cassius got his attention the moment he stepped on board.

"We've set up the comm channel to the Citadel with your Spectre encryption protocols, but it is still their buoy."

"Understood, thank you." He wasn't too concerned about the immediate secrecy, Spectre encryptions were the best in the galaxy, but the humans could very well store the communication for later. It might take them decades to acquire the key to the encryption, or they might never. But the risk was always there in the background thanks to the Shadow Broker. Garrus would just have to watch what he said, and hope the Council did the same.

Alone in the comm room, he reflected that this was the fastest they had ever replied to one of his comms before. They looked calm, but he knew from experience that their looks said very little.

"Vakarian, we've been eagerly awaiting your report."

_You had to use those words._ "I'm sorry, Councilors, things have been very hectic, I haven't had the time to write my preliminary report yet." Truth be told, he hadn't even started the first draft. He didn't know where to begin.

"Your mission?" Sparatus rephrased impatiently. He would never be seen fidgeting, but if he would, he would've been doing it right then. "Have the humans agreed to hear our request for armed intervention against the Krogan Clans?"

Garrus smiled. "They have, Councilor, and not only that, but I have secured a promise of aid; their fifth fleet is mobilising as we speak." Had delivering good news ever felt so good?

"Good work, Spectre," Tevos said, inclining her head. "You have all our gratitude."

"The question," Valern said, "is can they defeat the Krogan fleet?"

"They seem confident of that, and I've seen their ships in combat, they pack quite a punch." Garrus took a deep breath. AI first, then stealth systems? Or other way around?

"How soon can we expect reinforcements?" Sparatus asked.

"In a few hours. I'll let you know as soon as we're ready to get underway." Stealth systems, probably?

"That is far more quickly than expected. How much are we paying for this intervention?" Valern said, changing the subject.

"They want an embassy on the Citadel, the full gift you provided, and additionally they asked for three garden-world systems. I managed to haggle it down to one." He would've loved to take credit for that, but it hadn't taken that much convincing. Giddy elation at impending assistance or not, Garrus' investigator's instincts had had time to mull things over, and had come to a worrying conclusion sometime during the elevator ride. The Admiralty Board's agreement had come too easily.

The Councilors shared a look. "An embassy is agreeable," Tevos said, exactly like Garrus had anticipated.

"Their demand for a system was not entirely unexpected," Valern picked up. "Many factions are using this temporary power vacuum to carve out edges of Citadel space. There was no reason to suspect less of the humans. We will have to see; it might be that after the ongoing power shifts in the region, it won't be as easy to relinquish the system as we had thought."

Garrus caught the underlying meaning after long experience reading between the lines. "I'd recommend against that. The humans... wouldn't take that well."

"You seem troubled," Tevos said, perceptive as ever.

He hesitated. Good news, and a mountain of bad news.

"Speak up, Vakarian," Sparatus said. "Now is not the time to develop tact."

"I have a bad feeling about this," Garrus confessed. "My impression of the humans at this point is that they're..." _Ah, to hell with fancy words._ "They're dangerous. I don't mean that just tactically speaking, I mean as a species. The faction I spoke to are currently fighting in a multi-faction civil war that's being fought as much by underhanded methods as by arms. There doesn't seem to be any limit to the tactics they'll employ to hurt each other."

Not defeat. Hurt. The Asari Republics often frowned on the Hierarchy's tactic of blanket intervention by overwhelming force until all threat had been neutralised. But the humans, it seemed, would attack a target even though it was no threat - or even _because_ of it. Even the krogan preferred a good fight to a curb-stomp battle. At least until they got bored.

"They have dropped multiple nukes on their own homeworld, rendering it uninhabitable," your enemy was the enemy, not the ecology, dammit. You needed the same air as they did. "They have employed planetary-scale biological warfare against an agricultural colony, and assassinations seem like everyday occurrences to them." They'd fired on _escape pods._ He could never hope to explain why that bothered him on a deeply personal level. "Councilors, you know as well as I do how ugly a civil war can get when neither side feels like they have anything to lose. They'll turn the clock back to a type of warfare none of us have seen in our lifetimes."

Wonder of wonders, it looked like they were actually listening to him. Tevos touched her console, then he could see them all speaking, but no audio came. Didn't seem to change anything though, when their voices returned, they were still in agreement.

"We understand your hesitation," Sparatus said, "but we don't have a choice, not any more." The Councilor's voice was stoically grim. "We lost contact with the second fleet after they reported engaging the Krogan fleet at the far side of the Palaven relay blockade, and Palaven itself shortly after. Last transmission reported home fleet ready to intercept, along with every ship that can aim a weapon. But... It looks bad. We're unsure of the Krogan's forces. Second fleet will put a dent in them, but we don't know how much. Our best estimates puts the numbers Palaven will face in the high sixties." He breathed out. "Home fleet has a third of that, and no dreadnought." He looked at Tevos and Valern.

"We can't rule out a surprise attack against the Citadel, not with so limited intel," Valern said, for once sounding as sorry as Garrus had ever heard him.

So no reinforcements from the Citadel's defence force. Sixty or seventy ships. Against twenty something. Those were bad odds, especially without a dreadnought to coordinate the fleet. The Hierarchy's heavy cruisers were large and powerful, but not quite as solid on the line of battle as a dreadnought, which were designed from the keel out to be at the center of any given fleet.

Tonne for tonne, a Hierarchy ship would reliably take out its Krogan counterpart; thousands of years of space warfare experience couldn't be easily trained in the brief span of time the new Krogan fleet had existed. But three on one were just as crappy odds in space as they were in a bar brawl.

"We're left with the best of bad alternatives," Sparatus concluded. "Bring in the human fleet. If we are still alive at the end of the day, we can reassess. Until then, good luck."

The comm channel closed.

* * *

When Garrus exited the comm-room after taking a few moments to himself, Captain Cassius nodded in the direction of the airlock, where Vega was standing, helmet back on, still like a statue.

"We received the liaison approval while you were speaking to the Council. The Commander is coming; she's out in the docking bay taking care of business."

"Thank you, Captain." He wouldn't mind talking to her a little more before they left dock. So many thoughts, so little clarity. He wanted to trust _her_ , but her people...

He found her just outside, involved in conversation with her XO. Neither of them had noticed him coming, intent on each other.

"This is a bad idea, Shepard, and you know it."

"I thought you'd be happy. Get out of my shadow, get your own command."

"Yeah but not like this. I'm worried about you. If you go on that ship, when things get tense, you might not..."

She put a firm hand on his shoulder. "I'll be _fine_ , Kaidan. I know what I'm doing, and Anderson agrees with me."

"Yeah, but you have the most rotten luck in the galaxy, and when..." He broke off suddenly and they both turned at once, realising Garrus was there. He'd clearly interrupted something, though he wasn't entirely sure what.

"I'll be fine," she repeated to him, then turned to Garrus properly. "Won't I be safe on your ship, Spectre Vakarian?"

"You'll be safe with me," he promised, wondering why he was promising it since she'd already been on their ship and it hadn't been a problem.

"See? I'll be fine. You worry too much. Go on, Admiral Anderson is waiting for you."

Alenko sighed, clearly not happy, but discipline held. At least until he passed by Garrus on his way to the exit, and met his measuring look calmly. "She's more valuable than you know."

"Kaidan!" Shepard snapped after him.

He spun and lowered his head deeply, that still managed to looked arrogant to Garrus despite being followed by an apology. "I'm sorry, ma'am. I don't know what came over me. By your leave, Commander." He turned without waiting for an answer and continued out of the docking bay.

Well now.

Curious. Valuable... to who? In what way? Clearly he meant to make Garrus take keeping her safe more seriously, but he would've loved to know _why_. Had he meant it professionally, or politically; or maybe even personally important to him? It surprised him how much that thought annoyed him.

"Dissension in the ranks?" he asked, smooth by long practice.

"It's nothing."

Except she was still looking down the access corridor her now-former XO had left.

He remembered Alenko's silent insistence the guard accompany Shepard on the _Unconquerable_ , the short disagreement in the elevator, and now this. "He doesn't seem to have much confidence in you."

She shrugged. "He's a good Alliance soldier; he trusts me with his life, but not with mine."

"Why not? He's not sure you are?" _You're asking touchy questions, Garrus._

Shepard sighed. "He warned me about Cerberus. Said they were no good, not to be trusted. But I thought it would be a great opportunity; more resources under my command, better tech, better gear. I thought the risk was worth working with them, so I went anyway." The lights in her eyes flared and she fixed him with a sudden glare. "And then I woke up with a control chip in my head. So, yeah, he questions my judgement, but don't you _dare_ question him for _my_ mistakes. Some people hold me up like some paragon of perfection, but I worked willingly for Cerberus, and then they turned on us."

Garrus blinked, taken aback by the sudden drop in her tone, and didn't quite know what to say. To his relief, she started stalking off towards Vega and the _Unconquerable's_ airlock rather than change her mind about accompanying the ship. Garrus caught up with her in a few quick strides. "I apologise, I meant no disrespect. To either of you."

She exhaled, and nodded, calmer. "I know. Don't worry about it. Just accept that he means well, even when he's an ass." She lowered her voice as they stepped into _Unconquerable_ 's airlock, and he was just able to hear her mutter, "Because he's an ass who's usually right."

Not this time, Garrus decided. Shepard _would_ be perfectly safe on his ship.


End file.
